United States ports’ growth to continue in 2015

2015-02-04

BMI maintains its cautiously optimistic view on the US shipping sector. We believe 2015 will see the country’s major facilities consolidate the growth seen in 2014. Our overall view that the US economy will continue to accelerate remains firmly in place. We are forecasting GDP growth of 2.7% in 2015.

Stronger contributions from personal consumption expenditure growth will be offset somewhat by slower fixed investment growth and a contraction in government spending, as well as a negative contribution from net exports. We believe currency strength will discourage foreign customers from purchasing US-produced goods and services over the near term, while promoting an increase in imports. As a result, we expect that any improvement in net exports will be subdued in real terms over the coming months. Over a longer time horizon, our Oil & Gas team is optimistic about a range of new fields coming online, which will reduce US demand for foreign energy and eventually provide an important source of export revenues in the form of liquefied natural gas.

We believe risks are weighted to the upside across the US economy. The most likely of these risks, we believe, is that a greater-than-expected improvement in the labour market or consumer sentiment will lead to much stronger demand for goods and services. Such an outcome could also lead to stronger business investment in capacity and support further housing market growth.

Key Industry Data

* At the port of Los Angeles we forecast 3.5% growth year-on-year (y-o-y) in total tonnage in 2015, to reach 66.6mn tonnes.

* At the East Coast port of New York/New Jersey (NYNJ) growth is forecast to be 4.1% y-o-y in 2015, to reach 144.8mn tonnes.

* We expect Los Angeles to record growth of 5.4% in twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) throughput in 2015, falling to 8.9mn TEUs.

* We expect NYNJ to record a growth of 4.0% in TEU throughput in 2015, to reach 6.0mn TEUs.

Source from : Business Monitor International

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