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Toh Han Shih

Container throughput in Hong Kong and Shenzhen slumped last month, with industry experts predicting tougher  times ahead amid shrinking global demand.
Hong Kong port's container throughput fell 23.2 per cent  last month from a year ago to 1.622 million 20-foot equivalent units (teu), according to estimates by the Hong Kong Port Development Council.
Shenzhen port's throughput fell 17.5 per cent to 1.526 million teu, the worst monthly  drop on record, the council said.
Although  last month's decline in Hong Kong was smaller than the 24.1 per cent drop in December, last month should have been bolstered by the traditional cargo rush before the Lunar New Year, said Sunny Ho Lap-kee, the executive director of the Hong Kong Shippers' Council.
'February and March will be a lot worse than January. We'll be lucky if February's throughput [in Hong Kong] is a third of January's,'   Mr Ho said.
Typically, throughput would fall more than 60 per cent  in the month following the Lunar New Year from the previous month,  he said. He also predicted throughput in Shenzhen would worsen to a 25 per cent decline  this month from a year earlier.
'Factories have not started production yet. There are virtually no orders,' Mr Ho said.
Because of the lack of orders, many workers who went  home  for the Lunar New Year have put off  returning to the factories in the Pearl River Delta  until next month  or later.
Charles de Trenck, an analyst at Transport Trackers,  said  last month's Hong Kong figure  was worse than his forecast of a percentage decline in the mid-teens.
'The November to January drop, with not much hope for February, is the worst performance of Hong Kong's container throughput since the early 1990s, worse than the Asian [financial] crisis,'  Mr de Trenck said.
Meanwhile, Singapore, the world's busiest container port, suffered an estimated 19.6 per cent year-on-year decline in container throughput to 1.97  million teu, according to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
The  decline is Singapore's worst since the 1990s, even worse than in 2001, when Maersk, a major international shipping line, pulled out of Singapore,  Mr de Trenck said.



Tough times ahead as container volume tumbles