News
Reflecting stumbling growth in the world economy, world seaborne shipments grew by an average of just 3.8 percent in 2013, taking total volumes to nearly 9.6 billion tons, UNCTAD's ''Review of Maritime Transport 2014'' has reported.
Much of the expansion in seaborne trade was driven by growth in dry cargo flows, in particular bulk commodities, which grew by 5.6 percent, the report said.
The new report also has revealed that the size of the world fleet reached a total of 1.69 billion deadweight tonnage in January 2014, following 4.1 percent growth in 2013. Bulk carriers accounted for 42.9 percent of the total tonnage, followed by oil tankers (28.5 percent) and container ships (12.8 percent).
With world container port throughput increasing by an estimated 5.1 percent to 651.1 million TEUs in 2013, the share of port throughput for developing countries grew about 7.2 percent, higher than the 5.2 percent increase estimated for the previous year. Asian ports continue to dominate the league table for port throughput and terminal efficiency.
Global containerized trade grew by 4.6 percent in 2013 taking total volumes to 160 million TEUs, up 4.6 percent from 153 million TEUs in 2012. Together, intraregional (led by intra-Asian trade) and South–South trades accounted for 39.8 percent of global containerized trade shipments in 2013, followed in descending order by North–South trade (17.0 percent), the transpacific (13.6 percent), Far East–Europe (13.1 percent), secondary East–West (12.6 percent) and transatlantic (3.9 percent).
