Innovations on rail freight market

Ten years ago, the European Union recognized the importance of stopping further development of road freight transportation and the need for making rail freight a more prominent branch of industry. Rail transportation used to hold a more relevant position, but because of slow response to changes on the market and no investments in modernization, it now occupies only around 10% of the share in freight transportation in most EU member states. Most members have initiated the implementation of the restructuring and liberalization of rail market, with the aim of establishing a multimodal transportation network and reducing negative impact of road freight on the environment. The Croatian market is no exception, of course. It has liberalized the rail freight market since the Accession to the EU, while the rail passenger traffic is still monopolized by a company owned by the state. The Croatian national carrier HŽ Cargo has decided to face the competition by restructuring the current business and giving a sharper focus on innovation (intermodal terminals, RO-LA, and digitalization of business operations). The above-mentioned topics are analysed in the following chapter.

Bulk Cargo Marine Transportation Industry

Bulk cargo is being transported in large parcels to reduce transportation cost calculated per unit of cargo. Its main categories are: liquid cargo, dry bulk cargo and special bulk cargo. The deadweight of the fleet of ships carrying bulk cargo by sea increased 3.4 times in 1990-2020. Dry carriers account for 55% of the fleet and their deadweight increased 4.4 times during the same period. The Oil and oil products tankers account for 37% of the deadweights which has been increased by 2.4 times. The majority of the oil tanker tonnage (over 98%) comes from VLCC, Suezmax and Aframax type vessels. 60% of this is 200 thousands tankers sized more than dwt. The oil tanker freight market in 2002-2019 was characterized by a high level of volatility. VLCC tanker time-charter equivalent ranged from $ 8.7-95.2 thousand in 2002-2019. The variability of time-charter rates in other oil tanker categories was similar. The major part of the tonnage of product tankers (more than 90%) is derived from from LR2, LR1 and MR2 type of vessels. 43% of these are LR2 tankers. This segment of the freight market was also highly variable. LR2 tanker time-charter equivalent ranged from $ 7.5-28.8 thousand in 2011-2019 years. The main part of the tonnage of dry cargo vessels (over 69%) comes from Capesize, Panamax and Supramax type vessels. This segment of the freight market has been declining and highly volatile in recent years. The capesize-type ship time charter equivalent ranged from $ 3.5-30.8 thousands in 2011-2019. Keywords: bulk cargo, oil tanker, bulk carrier, gas carrier, chemical tanker, time charter equivalent.

Development of the transport and logistics potential of road transport in the Kyrgyz Republic, taking into account interstate integration

The paper considers the transport and logistics sector of the Kyrgyz Republic in the light of integration into the EAEU. The development of the markets for road transport services in the EAEU member states differ significantly. The level of development of the road transport industry in Kyrgyzstan is low, the maximum level of development in the union is in Russia. The paper also discusses the restrictions on the road freight market in the EAEU countries.

PECULIARITIES OF CURRENT WORLD SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES ON MARITIME ECONOMICS AND SPECIFICALLY SEABORNE TRADE

The article analyzes and systemizes current studies of leading world scientists on maritime economics and seaborne trade with the aim to reveal current trends and venues for future researches in this field. Special attention is paid to researches evaluating how the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic impacted shipping industry as a main global supplier of goods. All studies under review are conceptually grouped into two main branches. The first branch comprises papers focused on the world seaborne trade data dynamics, including official maritime reports. As opposed to Ukrainian and Russian maritime economics papers which predominantly describe and portray the statistical data available in official maritime reports issued by international organizations and shipping services providers, leading world scholars use this statistics as a baseline for individualized researches, mainly focused on investigation of correlation between various shipping indicators and prediction of same. The second branch comprises papers investigating trade of certain types of cargo, such as containers, crude oil, dry bulk. Several general peculiarities of both branches of researches are defined. Almost all of them attempt to provide an insight into the nature of a freight rate and to forecast the development of either general freight market or specific cargo related one. The utilized methodology is also identical. Depending on the aim of research and data availability, scholars employ various models of regression analysis, a standard tool of statistical modeling, which estimates the average relationship between two or more variables. No matter which freight market is under investigation, studies usually try to examine the connection of this market with others by evaluating the spillover effects between vessel types and vessel sizes. Distinguishing features of researches lie in the target stakeholders who could benefit from, either the industry in general or particular groups of market participants. In addition, nowcasting trade data is a real problem raised by the industry to modern science, which tries to tackle it by proposing innovative digitalized solutions.

Panamax markets behaviour: explaining volatility and expectations

It is widely accepted that the highly volatile Panamax market has many peculiarities; for example, Panamax vessels transport the major and the minor dry bulk cargoes worldwide. In contrast, the variety of cargoes and the flexibility in various trade routes, which the Panamax vessels follow, create a broad market with a relatively open structure. The importance of the Panamax market has also been highlighted by a recently upgraded contribution of the Baltic Panamax Index (BPI) to the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), affecting the progress of the BDI significantly. This paper investigates the behaviour of the Panamax market focusing on expectations and time lags. Expectations play a critical role in the freight market both for short-term and long-term decision making. In particular, we investigate the relationship between time lags and time-charter, trip and spot market rates, and the average earnings of the Panamax vessels of various ages. Time series analysis is used to reach our conclusions. The Hannan–Quinn criterion has been selected to identify the Panamax freight market’s significant lags for 1989–2020. An autoregressive model (AR) has been constructed to perform the statistical analysis. The findings indicate a strong correlation between time lags and the Panamax freight market, forecasting the behaviour of the market indeed. A better understanding of the Panamax market’s behaviour can improve shipowners and charterers’ planning decisions practically.