In Hellenic Shipping News 12/02/2016
He concluded by saying that “for the moment however, Chinese consumers have focused the majority of their spending on locally produced goods and services, as such only feeding China’s internal economy and insufficiently as it seems, as the decreasing growth in exports means that it is quickly having to really more and more on its own consumers which are not there yet to cover the gap left behind. Taking into account the “monkey” business that has been taking place in cases that have surfaced both in relation to the stock market as well as giant “Ponzi” schemes and you can tell that the Chinese economy is not only still in its infancy compared to a “developed” economy but it is also making the same mistakes as those done by the current “developed” economies. All concluding, the year of the Fire Monkey will be a year of transitions and it is to how successful these transitions will turn out to be that will dictate the next course of global trade. Till then wishing all our friends in the Far East, Gong Xi Fa Cai”.
The inevitable slowdown of the Chinese economy was expected to hurt dry bulk shipping, but few expected the blow to be this hard, especially given that the world’s second largest economy is still growing at a more than respectable pace. However, issues inherent with the dry bulk industry itself, like for instance the tonnage oversupply, have led freight rates to record setting lows over the course of the past few months. So, as we leave the Chinese year of the Wooden Sheep and enter the year of the Fire Monkey, hope is again on the horizon for a turnaround, sooner, rather than later.
According to Allied Shipbroking’s latest weekly report, “the Chinese economy has gone through a bumpy road these last 12 months, with the Dry Bulk market closely following in suit and suffering as a consequence. China has been the driving force behind much of the global growth noted during the 2000’s, with its fast paced infrastructure development and it’s ever in-creasing production lines, making it seem like a mammoth panda with a never ending appetite for commodities”.
According to Mr. George Lazaridis, Head of Market Research & Asset Valuations, “somewhere within 2015, this illusion disintegrated in the minds of many in the ship-ping industry as they witnessed a sudden drop in the growth of shipments and a col-lapse in the freight market. At the same time, China was showing a decrease in its GDP growth rate while also noting consecutive months of decreasing manufacturing data and a sudden halt and crash in its stock market. The shock waves quickly reverberated across the world, pulling down the price of commodities further and hitting the bottom line of many countries which used their vast exports of these commodities to China in order to feed their own prosperity”.
Lazaridis added that “with all this well and said, many now feel as if there is no escape from this never ending downward spiral. China, despite all the growth and wealth that has been generated over the past 15 years, still holds a fairly low GDP per capita compared to OECD countries. Combining this with the fact that it has only just started to undertake the transformation (moving from a cheap manufacturing location to an economy supported by innovation, technological development and highly skilled services) and you see that there is still plenty of room for further economic growth”.
Allied’s analyst also noted that “having witnessed similar economic shifts in countries such as Japan and S. Korea in the past, this transitional phase is fairly tricky to accomplish and key in keeping the growth momentum generated during the export -oriented growth phase on track. If and when this next phase succeeds, it will be creating a vast “army” of higher income consumers, which in turn will be able to support another round of global economic growth in the way consumers in the U.S. and Europe did during the 2000’s. This of course is in theory, as it is highly dependent on several market aspects. For example, when talking about the economic drive of the 2000’s for example, it is important to note that these U.S. and European consumers managed their ever increasing consumption on masses amount of cheap debt”.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
