Dubai: The global shipping industry is undergoing unprecedented challenges due to slow global growth, over capacity, declining shipping and freight rates and falling volumes amid a growing glut in the industry, officials said at a conference said on Tuesday.

“A new world order has emerged in the global shipping industry following the global financial crisis in 2008. The global shipping industry is undergoing a huge challenge,” Jamal Majid Bin Thaniah, Vice Chairman, DP World & Group CEO, Port & Free Zone World, told delegates at the opening of the three-day Seatrade Middle East Maritime exhibition and conference.

“A growth rate of 2-3 per cent is not acceptable for us, declining from double digit growth of 12 to 15 per cent prior to the crisis. For us, this is recessionary growth.”

Putting these developments in context, Bin Thaniah, said, that the industry had shifted from national to regional and global in the 1980s and 1990s when Europe was beginning to emerge as a country. However, following the global financial crisis of 2008, the world has returned back to regionalism and nationalist protectionism.

“The world order has changed a lot in the last three decades. Since 2008, the centre of gravity in the global economy is shifting from the West to the East. While the West is going back to protectionism, the emerging economies of the East are driving global growth,” he said.

“We want the Western countries to move away from protectionism and remove trade barriers that could spearhead global growth.”

His comments come a day after Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said, the rising weight of influence of emerging economies has shifted the balance of power.

“This clearly implies a number of transitions to which we have not yet adjusted as classic Westphalia concepts of sovereignty are being challenged by the realities of interdependence. Some may consider this a problem; it is perhaps better to think of it as an opportunity to look at the real shaping factors of trade,” Lamy told an audience on Monday.

“The old theories and hypotheses which governed the way we looked at trade in the 20th century will require better calibration with the new reality of trade in the 21st century. Decades from now scholars and policy makers will look back on this period as a watershed moment in how we approached trade and economic policy. Whether we, collectively, recognised the missteps of the past and learnt from them or whether we continued to forge ahead on the road already traversed. Was it not Confucius that said one should ’study the past if you would define the future’?”

Echoing the same, Christopher Heyman, Chairman of Seatrade, said, “These are challenging times for the global maritime industry. The impact of the financial crisis and recession in the western economies has brought difficult conditions in many market sectors, and an uncomfortable imbalance between supply and demand which some predict will last for two years or more. This combines with an operating environment of high costs and a complex regulation.”

However, despite the challenges, the regional trade in the Gulf is still growing, he said.

“It is clear, especially to those of us who come here this evening from Europe that this region is rebounding strongly. The evidence for this is to be seen from a range of reliable indicators, from cargo volumes through the ports to the traffic levels onShaikh Zayed Road,” he said.