Freight market

摘要

Global CFI is stable in early October. An upward trend in sea-river rates outlined in the Azov Sea in late September has sloweddown this week. Despite regular shipments of grain, the glut supply of available tonnage still does not allow the shipowners to raisethe Black Sea rates. The cargo traffic in the Baltic Sea is recovering at a very slow pace. Meanwhile, there are no signs of improvementin the Mediterranean market. A jump in bunker prices ($10-20/t up for IFO and $30-40/t up for gas oil over the week) additionallyworsens the situation for the shipowners. As a result, the estimated TCEs for various dwt vessels have dropped by $10-50/day. ISMCommodity Index has added only 0.5 points this week. Egyptian importers of steel products are nearly unable to purchase Black Seacargoes given the shortage of currency. As before, Turkish consumers prefer buying steel scrap rather than semi-finished products;they are mostly importing the cargo from the EU and US to be carried by large dwt vessels. No positive prospects for the owners ofsmall-tonnage fleet are seen in grain market. The demand for Ukrainian grain is already quite strong and it will hardly grow further.Prices for Russian wheat have inched up, but this level is too high for the buyers and therefore uncompetitive.