About M. Can Fidan

Another tough year for the shipping industry has passed. If you are one of the regular readers of our blog, you might recall my article from the first month of 2012, where I expressed my thoughts on what was going to happen in the year that was ahead of us – and unfortunately I was right. Except, one of the main points was not allowed to happen. No carriers went out of business. Well, the main reason for that are the external factors – where certain carriers got financial support either from a government or a government related private sector. I believe that at a certain point in business, you either need to cut that arm off or the infection will just spread to the entire body. Instead of cutting off the arm in 2012, we lived “with an infected body” where services got suspended, companies downsized and continued to let go off workers, while carriers tried to increase the rates with the reasoning of “sustaining the level of service”. Of course I wouldn’t like to see any company/carrier go out of business, but this way we all just struggle with it in the short term and the long run.

Now 2013 is officially upon us, so are you ready for the blue skies and shiny days? Don’t get your hopes up, buddy. [Read more...]

Each and every time we have an election, we always hear the same big words from our politicians saying that they will be announcing China as a currency manipulator and pushing them to change their policies, and if they don’t we will buy much less from them. Well in theory I think that would be really great. Because that’s a basic bargaining tactic. You are the biggest client of your vendor and you tell your vendor if they don’t drop their price, you will go somewhere else. Well if there in fact is someone else, this might work (also we are NOT counting this vendor as your 3rd largest customer in your whole portfolio), but what if there isn’t anyone else. I have always been the analytical type that likes to check the numbers for comparison. According to our Foreign Trade Stats, if we combine main “China alternative countries” like Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and India with their 2012 first 8 months trade numbers, they are not even half of what we bought from China between January and August. In this comparison we don’t have certain commodities that we have to buy from China anyways, as other countries don’t have it, and the same thing goes for the certain commodities that we have to buy from that specific country.

NOTE: All figures are in millions of U.S. dollars on a nominal basis

So when you think about it, would you like to have less variety of products when you go to a toy store, a retail store or a gift shop? Would you mind $15 tomorrow, for something you paid $10 for today? [Read more...]