Key shipping takeaways from China’s latest five-year plan

Key shipping takeaways from China’s latest five-year plan
Jason Jiang October 30, 2020 https://splash247.com/key-shipping-takeaways-from-chinas-latest-five-yea...

When it comes to politics it’s not just the US election next Tuesday that the global shipping community has been following closely. This week, China’s Communist Party’s Central Committee unveiled the first glimpses of the 14th five-year plan for the period 2021 through to 2025.

Key Beijing takeaways from a shipping perspective are the clear intentions to bolster stratgic reserves of commodities.

Brokers Lorentzen & Stemoco suggested in a note to clients today: “For the oil and tanker markets, and indeed the dry bulk shipping market, most interest will center on the plans to increase state reserves of oil, as well as strategic metals and farm goods.”

Braemar ACM, meanwhile, pointed out that the next five-year economic plan in China will mandate greater use of scrap steel and stricter pollution controls.

“We see these factors driving a plateau in Chinese iron ore imports, though the strength in steel output this year has raised the baseline from which demand will soften,” Braemar ACM stated yesterday.

China will look to non-fossil energy sources in a bid to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060, green plans first announced by president Xi Jinping last month.

The country’s biggest oil refiner Sinopec has pledged to accelerate its push into hydrogen, acting on the pledge to cut CO2 emissions to near zero.

In related news, across the Yellow Sea, this week South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in formally pledged to reach net zero by 2050, as has neighbour Japan.