Manufacturing holds the key to the development of India and that accounts to around 15.4% of real GDP in FY12 and that growth led to the employment of around 12% of India’s labor force. Indian manufactures have also seen lot of competition from other countries that have been doing well in manufacturing and surprisingly Indian manufacturers have made sure that they deliver results that have boosted the manufacturing exports that now stands at US$168.1 billion. Engineering goods account for the highest share which is around 40% of the total manufacturing exports. Apart from that gems and jewelry that account nearly 24.3%, chemicals and related products that stand third at 17.2% and textiles that account for nearly 13.9% of the total manufacturing exports in India.
With the progress happening in the Indian manufacturing segment, there are many foreign investments that are being made that actually help to boost the manufacturing companies today. While the manufacturing segment declined few months ago, but it has picked up well and Indian manufacturers are optimistic about the substantial growth that will happen in the near future. India is aiming towards the US$325 billion mark in terms of manufacturing exports as new businesses and firms enter the manufacturing sector that has seen lot of development.
With the Chinese new year fast approaching the race is on to get goods shipped before the holiday shutdown around the 31st January 2014. However the continuing issue of cargo space on vessels leaving major chinese ports is still a major concern. Most vessels are full despite the large general rate increases being applied with frequent occurances of bookings been rolled over to other vessels. This has created an issue of containers being booked on one vessel rolling over to the next and then having a general rate increase applied, which is having to be passed on to clients.
India has also been continuing to see a issue with space availability from the major ports of Mundra and Nhava Sheva, which looks like is going to continue for another couple of weeks at least.
Sri Lanka government in order to try and bring the many shipping charges under control. Has decided that from the start of 2014 all THC charges are going to be banned. Freight forwards will no longer be able to charge for this cost. It is also suggested that the Indian government is monitering the issue to see how well it goes before considering
THC charges are a standard known throughough the shipping industry. While trying to getting control of all of the many different shipping surcharges is definately with looking out. Someone has to pay for the ship containers to be off loaded and the THC charge will have to go somewhere. The shipping lines simply are not going to absorb this cost. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
The main shipping lines are again trying to introduce further general rate increases (GRI’s) for the month of September. We have seeing rates of over 250USD per TEU (Twenty foot Equivelent Units). This is from imports and exports from general Asia area including China and India to most Europe Union countries. The shipping lines are still trying to claw back some of the rate decreases in the past 12 months and restore profitabilty. October will see if the have managed to maintain these rates or under pressure from clients and forwarders they have had to roll some of them back. Suppliers and buyers are going to have to probably on the whole get used to some form of rate increase though.
With the shipping rush for Christmas 2007 due to start picking up again now we are half way through the year there is a real possibility of a meltdown on the container availability from China back to Europe. Effecting both 20foot and 40foot containers with the main problem being, simply the supply is out stripping demand. Booking times are increasing to 3-4weeks for containers and some lines are unwilling to accept large bookings because they feel they would risk compromising their service quality to the shipper. While rates are in decline for years now they are showing signs of increasing with lines implementing peak rate surcharges and other various surcharges.
From April 2007 the areas served by Andrew James Forwarding will increase. Our LCL service from China to the UK will increase to once a week, while our LCL French Service will increase to twice month.