Bangladesh’s share in breaking ships, globally, has gone up by around 8%, with the country accounting for more than half the ships dismantled across the world last year, according to a report.
With this improvement, the country has also retained its position, like last year’s, as the largest ship recycler in the world.
In 2019, Bangladesh captured the world market by dismantling around 55% of ships, confirmed the latest report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In 2018, it dismantled over 47% of the globe’s ships. Industry players have called for the government’s cooperation to retain this upward trend as the shipbreaking industry has started to recover after long ups and downs. Bangladesh received 6,682 thousand gross tons of ships for recycling last year, of which over 51% were bulk carriers, 19% oil tankers and over 15% container ships, said Unctad’s annual flagship report titled ‘Review of Maritime Transport 2020’ published on 12 November.
Around 75% of the world’s bulk carriers, around 64% of oil tankers and nearly 61% of liquefied gas carriers were recycled in Bangladesh in 2019, read the report.
Meanwhile, more than double the tonnage of vessels for recycling were sold to Bangladesh over India which had 3,251 thousand gross tons, or around 27%. Turkey bought 1,095 thousand gross tons or 9% of the global share The report warned new waves of the pandemic are further disrupting supply chains and economies and might cause a steeper decline. However, UNCTAD projected maritime trade will recover in 2021 and expand by about 5%. At the beginning of 2020, the total world fleet amounted to 98,140 commercial ships of 100 gross tons and above, equivalent to a capacity of over two billion deadweight tonnage.
In 2019, the global commercial shipping fleet grew by more than 4%, representing the highest growth rate since 2014 but still below the levels, it observed during the 2004-2012 period.
China, Japan and South Korea maintained their traditional leadership in shipbuilding, representing over 92% of the new building deliveries in 2019. Talking about Bangladesh’s progress, Mohammad Abu Taher, President of the Bangladesh Shipbreakers and Recyclers Association, said the government had increased the tax on scrap ship imports by 5% in July 2019 but traders had already imported a lot of ships before the tax hike. As a result, Bangladesh became the largest ship recycler in the world.
He also said the shipbreaking sector is still one of the key sectors of Bangladesh. This is because the materials required for setting up small and big industrial factories in the country come directly or indirectly from this sector.
