Drewry has a less optimistic forecast for 2020
According to the London-based maritime consultancy Drewry’s recently published Container Forecaster report, the outlook for the container shipping market in 2020 remains moderate. Drewry is now anticipating that world container port throughput will increase by 3.3% in 2020, following an estimated 2.3% rise last year.
The current year forecast represents a downgrade of 0.7 points on the previous outlook given at the end of September 2019. In a nutshell, for 2020, Drewry is forecasting faster demand growth than in 2019, a slight increase of overcapacity, higher rates (including bunkers) than in 2019 and a small reduction in (already low) annual carrier profits.
“A swift and amicable end to the USA-China trade dispute has the potential to give the global economy a boost. However, that outcome is still only a tantalising possibility,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager, container research at Drewry and editor of the Container Forecaster. (mw)