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As we approach the fourth anniversary of the start of the global financial and economic crisis the outlook continues to be bleak. The V-shaped recovery is now ancient history and the sustainable growth level that we hoped would settle high continue to show a sideways or even descending trend.
... paving the way for a growth scenario, as the dark clouds just won’t go away before that happens. As the world continues to deal with severe economic challenges – a very fragile world economy and high volatility in the financial markets – the IMF slashed its forecast for global GDP growth across the board.
The recent optimism has fortunately not completely evaporated following the latest series of less positive economic indicators from across the globe, including India, the US, Brazil and Spain. The EU debt situation creates a lot of uncertainty, not only as regards economic development but also regarding the political situation on both sides of the Atlantic Basin.
While growth in most emerging and developing economies continues to be strong, slowdowns caused by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, weaker than expected activity in the US and shocks to oil supply weighed on the global expansion in the second quarter of the year, the IMF said recently.
Hope for resumed activity in the oil tanker business is growing as the rebellion in Libya appears to be near a conclusion. Tanker shipping has been hurt by the lack of cargoes out of Libya for half a year now. Oil majors and oil service companies are right now getting back to Libya to assess the conditions of the facilities. It is hoped that the oil production can restart soon, opening up for renewed fixing of tankers to lift Libyan oil exports. Without Libyan oil exports, there is no hope for improvements in the tanker rates in the Mediterranean.
By looking at the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing & Service PMI, it is clear that global growth is under pressure, as PMI output reaches the lowest level since mid-2009. The PMI data shows that global private sector output expanded at the weakest rate since the recovery began in August 2009. At 51.4, down from 52.0 in September, the output index indicated only a modest increase in economic activity.
Demand. Lower growth rates for refinery throughput and drawdowns on swollen oil stocks has impacted the seaborne tanker market negatively. BIMCO expected this to happen...
It surely holds the potential to do so, on a national level as well as on the individual shipping company level.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its global growth projection from 3.7% in April to 3.4% in July. The adjustment is primarily due to the large negative result in the US in the first quarter of the year. The IMF stressed that this is now behind us – and it therefore sticks to its 2015 projection with an unchanged growth level of 4.0%.
As the recovery continues to move forward, the bumps in the road are both new “friends” and old “foes”. We are still concerned with the lack of inflation in both the US and Eurozone, as production capacity far exceeds demand.
