News
The combined volume of containerized shipments that major shipping companies carried among 13 Asian economies in the first quarter of 2014 increased 3.6% year on year from 3.339 million TEUs to 3.458 million TEUs. Exports from Japan grew 4% to 500,000 TEUs, while imports to Japan were as favorable, inflating 4.6% to 566,000 TEUs.
In March alone, a total of 1.294 million TEUs were moved on the intra-Asia trade, which rose 3.6% from the corresponding month of 2013. Containers from Japan fell 3.7% to 159,000 TEUs, but those to Japan swelled 7.5% to 218,000 TEUs.
Looking at containers shipped from Japan from January to March by destination, year-on-year improvements were made for those to China, which went up 11.8% to 186,000 TEUs; to Taiwan, up 9.6% to 52,000 TEUs; to Hong Kong, up 1.9% to 37,000 TEUs; to Vietnam, up 15.6% to 19,000 TEUs; to the Philippines, up 10.4% to 13,000 TEUs and to Cambodia, up 9.8% to 1,600 TEUs. On the other hand, containers destined to Thailand went down 11.4% to 47,000 TEUs; to South Korea, down 8.2% to 39,000 TEUs; to Indonesia, down 0.9% to 24,000 TEUs; to Malaysia, down 3.6% to 21,000 TEUs; to Singapore, down 6% to 10,000 TEUs and to Myanmar, down 20.3% to 800 TEUs.
As for containers moved to Japan in the same three-month period, meanwhile, those from South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore were smaller in volume than they were a year earlier, going down 7.7% to 51,000 TEUs, down 6.8% to 31,000 TEUs and down 2.2% to 9,000 TEUs, respectively. In contrast, those transported from the remaining eight trade partners were all brisk. Imports from China went up 5% to 263,000 TEUs; from Thailand, up 11% to 55,000 TEUs; from Taiwan, up 14.9% to 54,000 TEUs; from Hong Kong, up 6.4% to 29,000 TEUs; from Vietnam, up 9% to 29,000 TEUs; from Malaysia, up 0.5% to 22,000 TEUs; from the Philippines, up 12.3% to 20,000 TEUs; from Myanmar, up 12.9% to 800 TEUs and from Cambodia, up 44.4% to 600 TEUs.
