International trade by water fell 3.8% in the world

International trade in water fell at a year-on-year rate of 3.8% in the world in 2020, according to a report published by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

With this, these commercial flows were located at 11,494 million tons.

Worldwide containerized trade, measured in TEU, already at the beginning of 2020 showed negative year-on-year figures compared to 2019.

As a starting point of analysis, in May 2020 the drop began to become noticeable, with a negative year-on-year variation of 11.4 percent.

Then, in July 2020, the year-on-year figures were almost equal in levels compared to the same period in 2019, reaching -0.1%, by August and beginning to show positive figures for year-on-year variations, which persisted until December.

Thus, in the accumulated from January to December 2020 with respect to 2019 it is -0.9% worldwide.

International Trade

In Latin America, in March 2020 there was a variation of 0.7% compared to the same period in 2019, for in April 2020 there was a sharp fall of -15.8%, maintaining negative variations of -16.8 in May and June and -16.1%, respectively.

In October, year-on-year variations were positive again, but not enough to recover the levels of 2019.

Together, in the accumulated from January to December there was a variation of -2.9% compared to 2019.

In Latin America, imports of containerized goods have been greater than exports, and the fact that the impacts of the pandemic on imports have been stronger than those on exports has resulted, to some extent, in a convergence of both variables.

Thus, containerized exports from that region exceeded imports for most of the period from February to June 2020.

As of July, imports have once again considerably exceeded exports.

For exports and imports between regions, for the period January-December 2020, the effect of the pandemic has been tremendously strong.

According to the information provided by CTS, in forty-two of the forty-nine trade routes considered, the volumes were lower than in the same period of the previous year.