S&P Global to launch Indian Subcontinent-East Coast North America box rate assessments April 1

S&P Global Commodity Insights will launch two daily spot container freight box rate assessments for the Indian Subcontinent to East Coast North America shipping lane on April 1 to reflect growing trade on this route for products like textiles, packaged medicaments and electrical equipment on the front haul, and cotton, soybeans and scrap metal on the back haul.

S&P Global first proposed the launch of these assessments in a subscriber note published Feb. 11: Platts proposes to launch Indian Subcontinent-East Coast North America box rate assessments | S&P Global Commodity Insights (spglobal.com)

The assessments will reflect the transactable value at 17:30 Singapore time (0930 GMT), for transporting 40-foot equivalent (FEU) containers on the front haul and backhaul routes, for loading five to 25 days forward from the date of publication.

The US is the biggest export partner for the Indian Subcontinent, with all four nations (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) predominantly shipping out to the east coast of North America. Data from Panjiva, the trade analysis unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, showed that in 2021, the US accounted for roughly a quarter of all export container shipments headed out from each of the four nations.

Total exports from India to the US, for example, stood at $53.1 billion in 2019-2020 (April-March), up 1.3% on the year and around 11% higher than 2017-18, according to data published by India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

India also accounted for more than 75% of the total 2.2 million twenty-foot equivalents (TEU) container units shipped from the subcontinent to the US in 2021, according to data from Panjiva.

The proposed box rate assessments are:

S&P Global assesses key shipping regions under broad geographic descriptions.

The relevant descriptions for the routes are:

Indian Subcontinent: West Coast India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh

East Coast North America: Atlantic Coast including Canada

The assessments will be published in $/FEU and would follow the Singapore publishing schedule.

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