Tianjin: China’s shipping finance industry has gained a promising progress at its current preliminary stage in the past two years, however, the market downturn has also affected the industry from further development, said Yang Changkun, Managing Director of ICBC Leasing’s shipping division, at Marine Money’s China conference on Tuesday. He said ship financiers needed to have a longer term vision of the industry.
“There is enough demand to support the shipping industry in the long term, now the problem that worries people is the supply, so I think there should be some changes of capacity to change people’s expectations,” Yang said.
“While most people have negative perspectives about the shipping industry, we think the recession is a good time to invest in assets, but not all the assets are worth investing. We expect to combine the advantages of financial leasing and shipowner’s advantages in market management to create some project opportunities and a safer financing platform for the bank. I think there are still opportunities during recession times,” Yang said.
“As the shipping industry is an international industry, it could be a breaking point for Chinese banks to enter the international market, although the risks are high in the market, I think Chinese banks should have more communications with foreign shipping banks to get more experience and see it as a long term strategy. If you have decided to do shipping finance, you shouldn’t be affected by short term market fluctuations; you should have a long term preparation for market analysis, human resources and client databases,” Yang added. [28/11/12]
