Davos 2023: DP World forecasts further freight rate fall as demand slows

Davos 2023: DP World forecasts further freight rate fall as demand slows

DAVOS, Switzerland - DP World expects freight rates to drop by a further 15% to 20% in 2023, with the worst still to come as demand slows, the Dubai-based global logistics company's deputy chief executive and chief financial officer Yuvraj Narayan told Reuters.

Narayan said the first signs of a significant drop in demand were visible and freight rates on the shipping side had declined quite significantly on certain routes as agencies including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered growth forecasts.

Freight rates are the prices at which cargoes are delivered by container from one point of the globe to another.

"It is clear that there is a massive drop in demand, inventories are not clearing up the orders are not coming through," he said on Monday.

"We have not seen the worst of it yet."

The biggest problems were in China, Europe and the United States, as the world's largest producing and consuming economies, DP World's Narayan said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

Narayan said that across shipping freight rates there had been a significant decline in freight rates of anywhere between 20% and 50% from their peaks last year.

There were three overriding factors driving this,