Posted on: 10 September 2015
London has come top of a listing of maritime service centres published in English today (10 September 2015) by the Baltic Exchange and Xinhua, China’s news agency, whilst Singapore heads the overall list for its combined port and maritime services offering.
The International Shipping Centre Development Index (ISCD) covers 46 of the world’s largest ports and cities and is designed to bring clarity to investors and governments on the relative performance of shipping centres around the world.
London makes second place on the overall index, closely followed by Hong Kong. All three cities have large port facilities and support comprehensive maritime business service sectors. Shanghai has moved up to sixth place, overtaking Dubai. Tokyo has dropped out of the top ten with Athens taking its place at number ten.
Of the top ten global shipping centres, four are in Asia, four in Europe, one in the Middle East and one in the USA.
The report also provides a supplementary ranking, grading cities based solely on the breadth and depth of their maritime services sector. London tops this ranking, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Athens.
Commenting on the report’s findings during London International Shipping Week, Baltic Exchange Chief Executive Jeremy Penn said: “Singapore and London have continued to thrive for many reasons not least because of their locations, experience, strong legal frameworks, tax frameworks and the ease of doing business. As an international shipping organisation with members all around the world, the Baltic finds this report useful for demonstrating to governments the important role that a successful shipping centre plays for any country. Ports and the professional maritime services sector are big employers bringing international revenues to national economies.”
The index is based on evaluations of the following criteria:
1) Maritime Services: Brokerage, Maritime Legal Services, Arbitration, Shipping Finance, Ship Management, Maritime Insurance, Ship Engineering, Ship Repairs.
2) Business Environment: Economic Freedom, Tariffs, Logistics Efficiency and Developed Infrastructure, Official Corruption / Transparency, National IT and Communications Development.
3) Port Conditions: Container and Commodity Cargo Volume, Port Depth, Container Berths, Number of Quay Cranes.
The results are based on data from the following sources:
The Baltic Exchange
Drewry Shipping Consultants
The Heritage Foundation
International Association of Classification Societies (IACS)
International Transparency Organization
International Union of Marine Insurance
Lloyd’s List
London Maritime Arbitrators Assoc. (LMAA) & The Society of Maritime Arbitrators
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
United Nations E-Government Development Database
The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, 2013 Index of Economic Freedom
The World Bank
Xinhua Index Co
The ISCD formula is made up of a wide range of data values from world-renowned institutions converting them to a scale weighted by relative importance to long term centre prosperity.
A full copy of the report can be downloaded here.
