“The port will also face increasing price competition, as facilities like PTP are established and expanded to take a share of the regional transshipment trade.

 

“In addition to the expected slowdown in Southeast Asia’s exports to the US this year, the full impact of the loss of Maersk Sealand’s traffic to PTP will be experienced by the Singapore port,” said the report.

 

On June 18, Star Maritime reported that Singapore experienced a 13% drop in volume in the first quarter of this year and saw a decline o over 120,000 TEUs last month.

 

While the port’s container throughput took a dip, PTP continued to register strong box traffic growth in the first five months of 2001.

 

PTP handled 187,098 in April.

 

OSC in its latest report The East Asian Containerport Market to 2015, the UK-based maritime consultancy said that as the region’s key transshipment hub, Singapore has benefited from the generally strong economic growth and export trade across the entire Asean regional.

 

It highlighted the recovery in throughput during 1999 and 2000 following the economic crisis in 1998, noting it was “fairly dramatic”.

 

The report said the Northeast Asian market – including Japan, South Korea, Northeast China and Far East Russia – experienced throughput growth of nearly 30% while the Chinese port region including Hong Kong, east and southeast China and Taiwan recorded a 24% growth in 1999 and 35.5% in 2000.

 

Hong Kong’s box throughput jumped 44% to 18.1 million TEUs between 1995 and 2000, while ports in eastern China have more that tripled their 1995 capacity over the same period – jumping to 14.9 million TEUs.

 

China’s growth is unlikely to ease off, with forecasts predicting growth between 45 and 54% over 2000-2005, to 63.2-66.8 million TEUs.

 

The figures prompted OSC to predict throughput in ports in south and east China would easily overtake Hong Kong’s by 2005.

 

The established world’s busiest container port is likely to grow 25-37% over the same period and is expected to peak at 22.7-24.7 million TEUs.

 

“Hong Kong rates will be squeezed by the competition with China ports, and 30-34% for Taiwan to 13.7-14.1 million TEUs” the report forecasted.

 

“The pace of growth in Hong Kong and Taiwan will be strongly contingent on the volume of transit/transshipment traffic handled for China.

 

This in turn will depend on considerations of port capacity relative to demand, relative prices and efficiency, the report said.

 

While Southeast Asia is set to remain the key regional transshipment area, Northeast Asia has been tipped to benefit from a shift in market demands.