The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs(MLTM) has reported that container traffic all over the Korean ports in March recorded 1,968,000 TEUs, which is up 4.0% compared with the same month previous year.

This figure is the highest ever. The port of Busan contributed most to all-time high record by handling 1,495,000 TEUs(6.7% up).

According to "Survey on the recent trend of export/import sea traffic and its freight" published by Korea International Trade Association(KITA), such a sharp increase in container traffic has been affected by the rise in working days compared to the same month previous year, steady increase in transshipment cargoes and a switch to upturn in export/import traffic etc.

Looking into recent traffic fluctuation by overseas regions, an increasing trend is shown all over the region. Particularly the traffic of February in Europe, China, North America, the Middle East and Japan showed a big increase respectively as 20.8%, 16.0%, 15.5%, 13.0% and 10.6% compared to the same month previous year.

If you look at the sea freight on major North American routes in the first quarter this year, it mostly showed firm upturn in LA(23.1%) and New York(6.4%) per TEU compared with the fourth quarter last year. Antwerp, an European route, went through the increase by 95.8% per TEU.

It has been analyzed that major shipping lines' freight increase on Asia-North America and Asia-Europe routes in March and April on the trot as well as decrease in vessel's operation speed and space volume had an impact on such a sharp freight rise in the shipping market.

In spite of slowdown in the world trade, the container traffic all over Korean ports in 2012 is expected to reach 23.3 million TEUs(up 7.8%) due to aggressive marketing campaign to attract transshipment cargoes.

Even though export drop is worrying owing to consumer downturn in developed nations, sea export traffic is forecasted to record 14.11 million TEUs(up 5.2%) propelled by continuous economic growth in emerging countries(China, India and ASEAN).

A sea freight is expected to keep increasing for the time being. As for North American route, General Rate Increase(GRI) has been announced on 15th April at the level of 400$/FEU following the increase in Bunker Adjustment Factor(BAF) as of 1st April. Further, another GRI of 500$/FEU is scheduled from 1st May, which indicates rise by 63.2% compared with the same month previous year.

There has been no change on European route since 700$/TEU level GRI in March, however, there will be additional GRI of 400$/TEU as of 1st May(up 95.5%).

Asian route has remained the same about GRI but incidental expenses coupled with oil price such as BAF or EBS has risen by maximum 200$/FEU from 1st March and there is room for another rise afterwards.

Mr. Lee Byung Moo, a chief of Shippers & Logistics Dept. at KITA, commented "Shipping companies are implementing a sharp freight increase policy to make up for their losses but it will worsen export profitability in the trade. We are going to prepare a countermeasure to diminish exporters' damage caused by sea freight increase."