The international competitiveness of the Swedish maritime transport 2021
Traffic analysis has the Government's commission to follow up on the international competitiveness of the Swedish maritime transport annually. This year’s report offers a picture of the effects of the pandemic on Swedish shipping throughout 2020, and also analyses the first two quarters of 2021.
Summary report
While goods traffic in Swedish ports was largely able to continue despite the pandemic, passenger traffic came to almost a complete halt, which had major consequences for many Swedish ship owners. This was also discussed in our previous report. In this year’s report we can see that there was a turnaround during the first half of 2021, with increases in both goods and passenger traffic. We can also see that employment among seamen has looked more favourable during the first half of 2021.
The reduced traffic in 2020 resulted in major turnover losses among ship owners. From March 2020 through February 2021, turnover from Swedish shipping was, on average, 25 per cent lower than in 2019. From March 2021 through June 2021 turnover was, on average, even lower, roughly 30 per cent lower than for the corresponding period in 2019.
The number of onboard employees (calculated as employees per day) in the Swedish-registered fleet decreased by 32 per cent in 2020. The number of financial staff shrank the most, decreasing by 43 per cent. The number of ships’ engineers, mates and captains decreased by 12–14 per cent.
