The leader of the world’s largest container shipping group predicts that trade will recover quickly to pre-pandemic levels and grow slowly but steadily thereafter.
Søren Skou, an IMD alumnus (MBA 1997) who now runs AP Moller-Maersk, said: “Our expectations on the other side of the pandemic continue to be that we will see global trade growing more or less in line with global GDP on average.”
Although that is below rates before the 2008 financial crisis, it is in line with the 1-5% annual rises seen since and is significantly higher than many recent gloomy predictions. Global trade volumes fell by 15-20% in the second quarter, Mr Skou estimated.
Denmark-based Maersk ships almost one in five containers worldwide and is seen as a bellwether for global trade.