HONG KONG — Steel prices in China have fallen 12 percent in the first five weeks of this year — almost as much as in all of last year — as demand dwindles.
China’s imports of rubber, oil, iron ore and other industrial materials also fell sharply in January. And the global market for bulk freighter charters is in free fall, already below levels in the worst days of the global financial crisis in early 2009.
”In the past two months, it has been more or less a vertical correction, and this is a proxy for China,” said Basil M. Karatzas, a Manhattan ship broker.
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The daily cost to charter a so-called capesize freighter, a large ship particularly used to supply China, has fallen fastest of all, down 75 percent since mid-November.
“It’s pretty grim at the moment,” said Tim Huxley, the chief executive of Wah Kwong Maritime Transport, a large Hong Kong shipping line. “The bulk carrier market is at the lowest it has been in 30 years.”
