BalticDryIndex(BDI) en China

Het vol­gende is een gedeelte van een artikel uit Helenic Ship­ping News. Het geeft aan waarom olie en de BDI sti­j­gen.
The Baltic Dry Index, a mea­sure of ship­ping costs for com­modi­ties, rose to a sev­en-month high in Lon­don on accel­er­at­ing Chi­nese demand for iron ore. China’s imports of iron ore, used in steel­mak­ing, jumped 33 per­cent in April, set­ting a record for a third month, the cus­toms office said last week. The nation, the world’s biggest steel pro­duc­er, is stock­pil­ing com­modi­ties as part of a real­lo­ca­tion of its sov­er­eign wealth, Bri­an Jack­son, senior strate­gist at the Bank of Cana­da in Hong Kong, said yes­ter­day. ​“This will con­tin­ue for at least one year,” Nobu Su, founder of Taipei-based com­modi­ties ship­ping line TMT Co., said by phone from Lon­don today. ​“It’s a nat­ur­al hedge, so they are buy­ing commodities.”
Chi­nese demand is com­pen­sat­ing for a slump else­where, with the Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment in Paris pre­dict­ing a 13 per­cent drop in world trade vol­umes this year. Ships car­ry about 90 per­cent of world trade, accord­ing to The Round Table of Inter­na­tion­al Ship­ping Asso­ci­a­tions. The index track­ing trans­port costs on inter­na­tion­al trade routes added 39 points, or 1.5 per­cent, to 2,644 points, accord­ing to the Baltic Exchange. That’s the high­est since Oct. 8 and marks a 13^th con­sec­u­tive advance. Rentals climbed for every class of ship tracked by the bourse.
Nobu Su on April 1 said the index had ​“hit bot­tom” and would advance. The gauge has gained 68 per­cent since then. The index plunged 92 per­cent last year, its worst per­for­mance in at least two decades.
Amass­ing Com­modi­ties China’s amass­ing of com­modi­ties is ​“def­i­nite­ly hap­pen­ing,” Michael Gay­lard, Lon­don-based strate­gic direc­tor at bro­ker Freight Investor Ser­vices Ltd., said by phone today. ​“They are build­ing up some stock­piles right across the com­mod­i­ty spec­trum, from base met­als to coal.” Chi­na increased crude-oil imports in April by 13.6 per­cent from a year ear­li­er because of gov­ern­ment plans to boost stock­piles of the fuel to 60 to 90 days.