Polemis (ICS): necessary a "moratorium on the new orders for ships that do not have an economic purpose"



The industry of the marine transport needs a "moratorium on the new orders for ships that do not have an economic purpose". It has emphasized the president of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), Spyros Polemis, taking part yesterday to Athens to the World Shipping organized Congress from "Financial Times".

"We must also be realistic", Polemis has said. "In wide measure - it has explained - many shipowners are protect by the full impact of the current economic crisis from the increase apparently without pause of China, with its question of raw materials in insatiable appearance and with the unstoppable expansion of its productive ability. But - it has emphasized - also this lighthouse of hope cannot be guaranteed".

"If, as seems probable, the zone of the euro is entering in full recession or, worse still, it is imploding - it has found the president of the ICS - the implications almost sure will be total and this could reduce the question of services of marine transport from China and also from the other nations of the BRIC. Eliminating the consequences of that it could or it could not happen in Europe, the prosecuzione of Chinese politics of solid expansion of infrastructures cannot be given for discounted in case the nation decides to place greater emphasis to the satisfaction of the question by its population for a greater internal consumption".

Moreover - according to Polemis - it is necessary "also to recognize that many of the current problems to which must tackle the shipping have been undoubtedly agravated from shipowners that have emitted orders for too many ships against too much little cargo amounts to transport". For the president of the ICS a moratorium of the new orders of ships is therefore necessary, as "the current markets would seem to demonstrate how much seriously the excess of offer of ships has an impact negative on the revenues of the shipowners, many of which - it has evidenced - now they are fighting in order to cover the operating costs. In a climate of great uncertainty, the hires never have not been so birds. The hires for all the bulk carriers, for example, they are a fraction of that were some month makes".

Polemis however has specified that, rather than "the insatiable appetite of single shipowners, the greatest danger is perhaps the present excess of ability in the ship yards, with a almost obsessing engagement regarding the market share - has observed - manifested from the three main nations of shipbuilding the naval one: China, Korea and Japan, where 90% of the world-wide tonnage are constructed. Even if some yards had to fail - Polemis has explained - are almost sure that their governments will take part in order to support them so that they can continue to produce ships that little people want (what various from those speculators who could be tried from prices in free fall), with the China that has the obvious objective of wanting on board to transport a very greater percentage of its goods - perhaps 50% - of own ships".

Polemis has found that, "even if this is little immediate comfort for the single companies that are fighting in order to survive, a consolation, if only for the moment, is that the governments, at least up to now, seem to have completed a determined effort in order to avoid the excessive use of protezionistiche measures. Moreover - it has added - even if the total financial system seriously is threatened by the crisis, with the governmental support it is up to now allowed to survive and it is still intact. This is not, under every profile, an insignificant result and it does not go forgotten how much the world-wide economy has been approached the precipice".

However - it has emphasized Polemis - us one has not moved away much from the abyss: "the banking crisis - it has explained - is time transformed in a crisis of the sovereign debit and the new religion of austerity can still be the ruin for all we. When the governments have pumped enormous amounts of money in order to save the banks and have supported their treasuries with participations of quantitative lightening - it has asserted - they would have had also to make more very so that this was subordinated to the maintenance of the loan. Fortunately - it has specified - even if the banks are not at all society in their complex unimpeachable, seems that it is in the interest of the same banks to support many of those companies owners of a shipping company that can have had recent difficulties, even if it is not at all clear as for along this situation can continue and if the banks of the shipping even can begin to lose their patience regarding any company that you do not respect own financial engagements".

"The crisis of the debit - it has concluded - means that the banks will limit the loans to the field of the shipping as they are held to improve their budgets and to clearly reduce their relationship between debit and capital. The majority of the banks of the shipping is still European and already is hit by the crisis of the area euro".