The maritime trade in the developing countries including Bangladesh will be affected by falling demand and export revenues, remittances, foreign direct investment and official development assistance, according to a new report.
The growth in international maritime trade stalled in 2019 owing to the slowdown in the world economy and trade, said the report released on Sunday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The report titled "Review of Maritime Transport 2020" pointed out that the growth of maritime trade reached its lowest level since the financial crisis of 2008-2009 which further darkened in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It said the least developed countries are hit hard, given their limited resources and exposure to supply-chain disruptions such as in exports of textiles and clothing products (for example, Bangladesh).
After rising moderately (2.8 per cent) in 2018, volumes expanded at a marginal 0.5 per cent in 2019.
The report said a number of factors weighed on the performance of maritime trade that included trade policy tensions; adverse economic conditions and social unrest in some countries; sanctions; supply-side disruptions, such as the Vale dam collapse in Brazil and Cyclone Veronica in Australia; and low oil demand growth.
UNCTAD estimates the total volume of maritime trade in 2019 at 11.08 billion tonnes.
The pandemic has led to reductions and delays in new building delivery and to a standstill in ship recycling whereas Bangladesh is the top destination of dumping ground for ships, the report said.
This can be attributed to lockdown-induced labour shortages in the shipbuilding and ship recycling industries.
In addition, other measures implemented to reduce the spread of the pandemic, such as travel restrictions, made it impossible for owners to arrange visits or obtain a crew for final delivery, the report said.
Bangladesh remains the country with the largest global share of recycled tonnage, accounting for more than half of the ships recycled in 2019.
Together with India and Turkey, these three countries represented 90.3 per cent of the ship recycling activity in 2019.
Since 2016, global volumes of recycled tonnage have been on the wane. Volumes fell to 29,135 thousand gross tonnes in 2016, 23,138 thousand gross tonnes in 2017, 19,003 thousand gross tonnes in 2018 and 12,218 thousand gross tonnes in 2019.
The UNTAD report said the maritime industry is increasingly embracing automation, and ships and ports are becoming better connected and further integrated into information technology networks.
"As a result, the implementation and strengthening of cyber security measures is becoming an essential priority for ship owners, managers and port operators," it said.
In the context of the pandemic, international organizations and industry have issued calls for governments to remove restrictions on the use and processing of electronic trade documents and the need for documentation to be presented in hard copy, the report said.
The governments have made significant efforts to keep their ports operational and speed up the use of new technologies, including digitalisation.
In addition, the industry associations have been working to promote the use of electronic equivalents to the negotiable bill of lading and their acceptance by more government authorities, banks and insurers, it added.
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