Late last year, we cited HSBC economists as they outlined scenarios for global supply chains. They showed that the possibility of improving the situation over the next several months is real, but subsequent analyzes indicate that this perspective can be safely put between fairy tales.
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Photos from the world's largest unloading ports appear from time to time on the headlines of leading industry portals. Nothing unusual. The queues of ships have not been reduced for months, which resulted in longer delivery times for products ordered online, extended waiting times for specific components for production plants or shelves in stores, which are increasingly difficult to fill on time with the right goods.
Incredible numbers
This was the case in 2020 and 2021, and it seemed that the situation would eventually return to normal, the state it was before the events in Wuhan, where the pandemic began. It looks a bit different from the perspective of IHS Markit specialists, who prepared a special report on this matter at the request of CNBC. It shows that this year it will be difficult to expect an improvement in the situation in the context of supply chains, and it is very possible that the problem will also be felt in 2023.
Interestingly, the delays we are currently facing are the most serious in a quarter of a century, and the queues at unloading dates are greater than ever in history. According to the above-mentioned report, more than 20 million containers are currently waiting in ports around the world - attention, this is no joke - that have not yet been unloaded. This figure seems almost unbelievable, and its significance will increase even more if we add that it is almost half of the global trade for such segments as electronics, auto parts and household appliances.
This is where we come to what many have warned about over the years, which is to be overly dependent on China and the production that takes place behind the Great Wall. CNBC reports that as much as 42 percent of all containers that reach the United States by sea come from China, where seven of the ten largest container ports in the world operate today.
Giant disturbances
So it is not surprising that when the first pandemic thaw occurred, and China began to return to normal operation and was recovering from losses month by month, the volume of containers leaving Asian ports increased more and more. To understand this better, it is worth paying attention to the global GDP growth, which has increased from 3.4 to 5.7 percent since the first lockdown. While pressure was increasing, supply chain disruptions did not diminish.
According to Bindiya Vakil, CEO of Resliinic, supply chain deficiencies increased by 638 percent in the first half of 2021 alone!
During the study, as many as 1.7 billion different channels of obtaining information on potential and existing disruptions in supply chains were taken into account. For this purpose, almost 4.5 million sources published in one hundred languages were cited, which makes the report of considerable scientific value and it can be assumed that it reliably reflects the reality and forecasts for the coming months.
So if we take this data seriously - and there seem to be reasons for it - then it can be expected that it will not be possible to deal with the problem of supply chains in 2022. Going further into the future is, in turn, an ordinary reading of tea leaves.
