See articleA.P. Moller-Maersk made a loss in the first quarter, the first at the shipper since at least the second world war.
This summer the government attempted to get the shipper to swallow Sino-Trans, China's biggest freight-forwarder, an operation viewed with contempt by COSCO's senior managers.
Maersk Line, a Danish shipper, announced on February 21st that it had ordered ten colossal vessels for $1.9 billion from South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding, with an option to order 20 more.
Indeed, there are now seven bills going through the legislature that would increase regulation to one degree or another in the industry, mostly in response to shipper outrage at the shambolic rail performance of recent years.Not that anybody expects the moratorium to last forever, or even past next summer.
Still, it is impossible for customs officials to search every container, box or package entering every country, so the responsibility for security and import declarations rests with the shipper and the company carrying the goods.
Chinese import regulations are hazy at best; a shipper faced with a bribe-seeking bureaucrat has no obvious legal respite.The Chinese argue that no member should be subject to more than the WTO's existing rules, and insist that "mutual trust" and "mutual confidence" ought to be enough.
That boosts costs to the shipper, and, ultimately, the consumer as well.
In a recent deal it scrapped two old ships and bought two bigger, newer ones from MISC, a Malaysian shipper which is quitting the container business.This allowed Costamare to revamp its fleet for a fraction of the cost of ordering new vessels.
For punters keen to get in on the action, Qatar Gas Transport (inevitably, the world's biggest LNG shipper) plans the country's largest-ever share flotation on January 16th.So how did Qatar emerge as a gas powerhouse?
Why should it be held to be any different from other government-owned transport modes like public roads, the waterways system, public airports and air-traffic control And why should rail passengers be any less subsidised than the motorist, the airline passenger or the barge-line shipper?
THE "conveyor belt" for global commerce is how Scott Davis, the boss of UPS, describes his company, the world's biggest express-parcel shipper.
