New Chinese Index Charting ’Silk Road’ Freight Sinks to Lowest Level - Bloomberg Business
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-11/new-chinese-index-charting-silk-road-freight-sinks-to-lowest-level
A new Chinese shipping index that tracks freight movements among the countries on the route of one of President Xi Jinping’s key trade initiatives has fallen to the lowest level since it was established.
The Maritime Silk Road Freight Index was launched on a trial basis by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange last July. The index takes January 2015 as its base point, and at that time it had a value of 100.
The latest update, released on February 29, shows that the index has declined to 65.11 after falling 10.3 percent over the previous month alone.
[…]
China’s economic slowdown has triggered a drastic decline in worldwide shipping activity. China’s exports fell 25.4 percent year on year in February, and imports were down 13.8 percent.
The Baltic Dry Index, the global measure of the cost of shipping coal, iron ore, grain and other non-oil commodities, fell to a record low in February. At 9 a.m. on Friday it stood at $384, down from a peak of $1,222 in August.