SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES — The slump in global trade has left a growing armada of empty cargo ships and tankers cruising the seas in search of the cheapest places to drop anchor while they ride out the economic storm.
About 1,000 of the world's shipping vessels are laid up for lack of freight, and the number could swell to several thousand in the next few years, Norwegian risk management foundation Det Norske Veritas reported this month. Popular Southeast Asian ports such as Singapore are turning ships away.
Eager to get more of the lucrative ship-parking business, the Philippines has opened four ports to laid-up vessels and is considering requests to add at least two more.
Shipping companies don't pay by the hour, but by the deadweight ton, a measure of a vessel's carrying capacity. Here in Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base north of Manila, it costs just over 17 cents a ton to park a ship for a day. Most stay at least a month, and the ticking meter adds up to big bills, not even counting the cost of food and salaries for the crews minding the idle vessels.
Across the broad bay, the horizon is filled with empty tankers, container vessels and car carriers that tower several stories high. More than half the 20 ships anchored in Subic weigh 151,000 deadweight tons.
At least three more empty ships are steaming toward the bay after unloading cargo in other Southeast Asian ports, carrying nothing but hope for better fortune.
"I'm not an economist, but at the rate things are going now, I think it will take time for everybody to recover," said Ferdinand Hernandez, Subic's deputy administrator for operations. "We're happy in the sense that we make extra money. But we want the whole world to rebound, because that will also give lots of opportunities to us."
The boat parking business is so good that it has more than offset losses Subic Bay would have suffered from the drop in freight handling fees and other income. The port's total revenue is up 127% this year, Hernandez said.
Shipping industry experts here say the global trade slowdown is the worst since the 1973 oil crisis, when Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos decreed that several of the country's ports had to shelter suddenly useless tankers and other ships.
"Some vessels were tied up here for more than 10 years with no crew," shipping agent Rodolfo Estampador said. "They were bulk carriers, cement carriers -- all types of vessels. Nobody can tell what will happen this time."
