As economies continue to rebound, global container trade is expected to grow by 5.8% this year, according to a forecast today from Alphaliner.
Recently, the IMF revised its global GDP growth forecast for this year to 6%, which suggests container volumes are set to track economic growth.
However, Alphaliner’s analysis suggests that in fact the opposite will happen, and “the long-term trend shows a continued decline in the teu-to-GDP growth multiplier, linking container traffic to global economic growth”.
It explained that, in the 1990s, the teu-GDP multiplier hovered around the 3.4 mark and began to decline at the turn of the century – in 2000, GDP grew by around 5% while container volumes grew 12.5%.
