Covid-19 has disrupted life and business for the entire world. The number of infections worldwide shows no sign of abating. All of us have to respond and react; those who do not might be set back by several years.
We have not seen the end of this pandemic and the return to normalcy may be some time away. While Covid-19, undoubtedly, has been the biggest challenge for us this year, the maritime industry has fortunately remained resilient.
After a year like no other, TradeWinds asked 40 shipping industry stakeholders what they see for 2021 after a year beset by the coronavirus, and how the pandemic will shape shipping's future.
I am glad that as a port, our container throughput registered a marginal fall of 0.9% from January to September 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. Slowly but surely, we are seeing signs of recovery. Our September 2020 container throughout recorded a 3.6% jump from a year ago.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, many of us know that we cannot merely be responding to it. Crew changes were a challenge, and Singapore had to adjust its policies to achieve a fine balance between managing public health risks and the safety of seafarers.
But we soon repositioned our efforts to come up with more sustainable solutions — facilitating crew change through a set of "safe corridor" procedures, creating a Crew Facilitation Centre to provide dedicated facilities to house sign-on and sign-off crew and establishing a SGD1m ($745,000) Singapore Shipping Tripartite Alliance Resilience (SG-STAR) Fund with our partners to work with stakeholders in seafaring nations on concrete solutions for safe crew changes.
Given the situation, we must move forward this way, to not only react to the challenges in a swift manner, but also reposition ourselves for the new normal, to ready ourselves for the next wave of cases.
What is the new normal for the maritime industry then? Even as production and consumption is slowly ramping up, we expect global trade patterns to shift, giving rise to shorter supply chains, near-shoring trends and increased intra-regional volumes.
Given our hub port status, we will remain an active advocate for common data standards between ships, ports and maritime value-chain stakeholders. This will usher the global shipping industry into a new era — one that is more efficient, resilient and green.
Moving forward, Maritime Singapore will focus on three strategies:
1. Forge stronger collaboration with other port authorities, industry associations, tripartite partners and international organisations.
2. Accelerate digitalisation for maritime companies, especially our small and medium enterprises.
3. Press ahead for maritime decarbonisation. Singapore fully supports the International Maritime Organization’s target for the industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% — from 2008 levels — by 2050.
