Recently, international logistics has become a major headache for foreign trade companies. The decline in logistics capacity has caused the price of container shipping to skyrocket. Bumping and dumping of containers has become the norm. Reports of "a box is hard to find" frequently appear in the newspapers. These chain effects have attracted the attention of the regulatory authorities.
In response to this issue, Gao Feng, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, stated at a regular press conference on the 26th that due to factors such as the continued spread of the global epidemic, rising prices of international bulk commodities, and structural imbalances in global transportation capacity, the prices of some raw materials are at high levels and freight rates are high. High enterprises and insufficient capacity have always plagued foreign trade companies.
Gao Feng said that the phenomenon of tight capacity and high freight rates is global. The Ministry of Commerce, in conjunction with the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the General Administration of Market Supervision, has actively taken measures to increase container supply, increase shipping capacity, and strengthen international cooperation. Local governments have also increased their shipping service guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises to help them reduce costs and losses.
Global port of plug and freight forwarding increase prices to push freight rates to record highs
Jia Dashan, deputy dean of the Water Transport Research Institute of the Ministry of Communications, pointed out that compared with 2019, global shipping demand is expected to increase by 1% this year, container growth by 5%, and the scale of transportation capacity and container supply will increase by 7.1% and 7.4%, respectively. The overall growth is faster than the volume of transportation, but the freight rate has risen significantly. In his view, the rise in container ship rentals, seafarer costs, intermediary fees, and oil prices have all contributed to the surge in shipping costs.
According to industry insiders, the current global shipping capacity of containers in operation reaches 24 million TEU, and containers reach 48 million TEU. In the first half of the year, the capacity of China to North America and Europe increased by 55% and 30%, but the "hard to find a ship, hard to find a box" still intensified. The fundamental reason for the lack of capacity lies in the inefficiency of the capacity caused by the port jam and shortage of seafarers. At present, the average port congestion time of basic ports in Europe is 3~5 days, that of US West ports is 10~12 days, and US East ports is about 7 days. Recently, Asian ports such as Yantian Port and Ningbo Port have also experienced port congestion.
In addition, freight forwarders have raised prices one after another, pushing up the entire shipping price problem. Since the Ministry of Transport of China has strict management of shipping prices, the prices of all routes and various surcharges need to be reported to the Shanghai Air Exchange, so the basic charges of shipping companies are not too high, but the level of intermediate freight forwarding companies is increasing. However, the price has increased exponentially, which has caused a lot of pressure on logistics costs for the export of manufacturing enterprises.
Source: Mobile Public Account
