Shanghai to launch dry bulk and oil indices

The Shanghai Shipping Exchange (SSE) will launch China's first dry bulk and oil import indices on Wednesday, Seatrade Asia online reports.

The new dry bulk index will be based on strict price collection from charterers, brokers and shipowners and focus only on China, according to Zhang Ye, president of SSE.

“China owns the world's largest shipping capacity and is one of the world's biggest dry bulk consumers... so we hope to provide an index that focuses on China's market, which is very important for us,” Zhang said. “We didn't have our own index in the past, while BDI can reflect the overall global trade market. So, I don't think the Baltic Exchange needs to worry as the market won't give up on the BDI.

“We adopt a different pricing system. The BDI is more of global index and China is just part of its index.”

Jeremy Penn, chief executive of Baltic Exchange, described Shanghai's benchmark as “poorly modelled on the Baltic indices” as the Baltic already reported the vast majority of routes planned by Shanghai.