China may continue to dominate global sea-trade by 2030

Sea-trade cargo volumes are likely to see a major shift with China continuing to be a dominant player with India as a distant follower.

Further, with continued economic reforms in Latin America and Africa, world trade looks set to witness considerable changes with volumes expected to rise to 11.4 billion tons in 2015 from 8.4 billion tons in 2010, a compounded annual growth rate of 5.2%.

These were the findings from the report “Insights into Shipping 2012”, released by Standard & Chartered Bank earlier this month.

Amongst the shipping sectors, containers have witnessed the highest compounded annual growth rate of 8.7% between 2000 and 2011. However, this growth is expected to moderate to 7.7% in the next five years. The total container throughput is expected to reach 790 million TEUs in 2015 from the current level of 590 million TEUs.

In 1990, China contributed barely 2% of global container throughput, but as it turned the factory of the world, this growth turned 25.6% between 1990 and 2010. Consequently, China’s share in the world container throughput stood at 24.8% in 2010, leaving the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea far behind, said Mr.  Jayendu Krishna, Senior Manager at Drewry Maritime Services (Asia) Pte Ltd.

According to Mr. Yael Selfin, Head of Macro Consulting Strategy at PriceWaterHouse Coopers, China is expected to overcome the US and dominate global trade by 2030.

“Together with China, emerging economies like Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and India are also poised to play an increasingly important role in the top sea freight routes in 20 years,” Mr. Selfin said in his findings, which was part of the Standard Chartered Bank report.

According to the findings of PWC, trade routes between economies in the Asia Pacific region make up for eight out of the top 25 trading pairs in 2030, reflecting a trend of rapidly increasing trade between China and other fast growing Asian economies.

India figures twice in these top 25 trading pairs while China occupies the space 17 times. These pairs were selected by PWC based on the present size of 29 economies and expected economic growth rate and then using its projection for the exports by these economies in 2030.

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