[271113.EN.SEA] Shanghai's New Cabotage Laws Disappoint, Limit Positive Impact: Drewry

THE formal liberalisation of cabotage regulations for cargo moving to and from Shanghai is expected to have a limited effect for the port's transshipment activity, according to London's Drewry Maritime Research.

While the new law allows foreign flagged vessels to join in the coastal trade, only those foreign-registered vessels that have to have Chinese owners enjoy such rights.

This, said Drewry, is less a "relaxation" than bringing cabotage rules into in line to what is happening in practice. Nor does the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone represent much change as it only adds to existing Free Trade Zones in Shanghai's Yangshan port and Pudong airport.

At present, Shanghai does have a significant amount of transshipment activity. It is not easy to measure because official "transshipment" statistics does not include river barge traffic, but focuses only on oceangoing vessels transshipment.

As there is little change to what already happens, Busan, the leading transshipment hub in the region and a major port for serving Chinese Bohai Rim feeder ports, is likely to remain dominant, said Drewry.

Busan's 8.4 million TEU of transshipment in 2012 makes it by far the largest hub port in the northern China, Korea and Japan. Its success is based on a number of factors, including the fact that foreign owned and flagged feeder vessels can serve Chinese ports. Busan also has a favourable location as first port of call inbound and last outbound for transpacific routings.

There is one other factor which impacts on Shanghai's potential to significantly increase its transshipment activity - the huge scale of the port. If for example Shanghai's seagoing-vessel to seagoing-vessel transshipment incidence increased to 30 per cent of total throughput, it is still well below Busan's near 50 per cent. This would add millions of TEU per annum to the port's activity.

Source : HKSG.