|
|
Hong Kong Freight Transport Report Q2 2010Published by: Business Monitor International Published: Feb. 16, 2010 - 60 Pages Table of Contents
AbstractHong Kong-based carrier Cathay Pacific Airways will bring one of its five parked 747-400 freighters back into operation as it aims to capitalise on growth opportunities in world cargo demand, the company announced in January. The freighter was undergoing maintenance and was due to start operations in late January 2010. The freighter would not be part of the airline's existing cargo capacity, but would be saved for special charters. The air freight industry has reasons to look positively towards 2010 after the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported that figures for global air traffic improved in November 2009, with passenger demand rising 2.1% year-on-year (y-o-y) and freight demand up 9.5 % y-o-y. Cathay Pacific is recognised as a world-class airline, and flies passengers and cargo to about 90 destinations around the globe.While maintaining our estimate for GDP change in 2009 and 2010, we have become more pessimistic about the medium-term outlook for 2011 and 2012. We now believe that Hong Kong’s economy contracted by 3.0% in 2009, will recover with 2.4% growth in 2010, but will then perform rather disappointingly with 3.0% growth in 2011 (down from the 5.1% we expected earlier) and 3.6% in 2012 (down from 5.6%). Across the next five years (2010-2014), we project the local economy to grow at an annual average of 3.3%, lower than the 4.0% registered in 2005-2009. Hong Kong’s transport businesses, which are mainly organised around shipping and airfreight, therefore face a period of recovery from the 2009 recession and moderate growth thereafter. Maritime freight volumes will continue to be affected by the global downturn and by competition from other regional ports such as Shenzhen, Singapore and Shanghai. In terms of total freight handled across all sub-sectors measured in million tonnes, we forecast Hong Kong to experience average annual growth of 2.8% in the 2010-2014 period, compared with 1.5% in 2005-2009. According to our estimates, transport and communications GDP fell by 3.0% in 2009, on a par with overall GDP. For the 2010-2014 forecast period, we expect the transport and communications sector to outpace the economy as a whole in value terms, although only by a small margin. It will achieve average annual growth of 3.5%, versus 3.3% for overall GDP. The total value of transport and communications GDP will rise to US$29.5bn in nominal terms by 2014, or 11.0% of Hong Kong’s GDP. The transport and communications sector employed 379,400 people, or 11.3% of the labour force, in 2008. This will rise to 389,000 by 2014, while not changing as a proportion of the total labour force. The economic boom in mainland China, notwithstanding the recent ‘pause’, will continue to create a complex mix of opportunities and threats for Hong Kong. In general, as the Special Administrative Region (SAR) repositions, we believe it will be the higher-value/lower-bulk transport modes that are most resilient. We are relatively confident about longer-term prospects for airfreight, particularly for regional trade in electronics, IT products and express/parcel delivery. BMI’s forecast is that airfreight volume (in million tonnes/km) will grow by an annual average of 4.7%, faster than in the preceding five years. We continue to trim our seaborne freight forecasts to take account of the growing competitive threat from rival ports, particularly those in mainland China with lower labour costs, such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. We expect throughput to grow by an annual average of 3.0%, an improvement on the 2009 recessiondominated 1.8% figure for the preceding five years. Rail freight, always relatively marginal in Hong Kong although beginning to pick up in importance, will grow at 327%, an increase on the rate of the preceding five years. Get Full Details About This Report >> |
|
|||
|
About MarketResearch.com
|
||||