Korea Customs Service to Publish 'Korean-style Container Freight' Statistics Monthly

Photo by Asia Economy DB

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korea Customs Service will start releasing monthly container sea freight rate statistics from this month.

According to the Customs Service on the 16th, the transportation industry has relied on the 'Shanghai Container Freight Index' due to the lack of a freight rate indicator for containers departing from Korea.

However, as freight rates have recently surged and become a social issue, there has been growing demand for accurate freight rate statistics that reflect the domestic situation.

For the same reason, the Customs Service has developed a Korea-specific container freight rate statistic to meet this demand and decided to disclose container sea freight rate statistics externally on the 15th of every month.

The statistics to be released monthly will more accurately reflect the freight rates actually borne by companies, including irregular and spot contracts (SPOT) as well as long- and short-term freight rates for containers departing domestically. The freight rate information from companies' customs declaration forms will be refined to extract and provide data-based utilization information such as average values by shipping route.

Through this, the Customs Service expects that domestic export companies will be able to use statistics tailored to the domestic situation without relying on foreign indicators, enabling them to understand the trends of freight rate fluctuations among major trading countries.

Provided by Korea Customs Service

In particular, the Customs Service explains that it will be possible to accurately grasp freight rate information for nearby trading countries, which was difficult to confirm using the Shanghai Freight Index that has been mainly used so far.

A Customs Service official said, "Freight rate information is essential for export companies when negotiating freight rates or planning the transportation of export and import cargo." He added, "The Customs Service will gradually expand and disclose statistics not only on export container freight rates but also on import container freight rates and air export-import freight rates, supporting domestic companies to accurately and conveniently check freight rate fluctuations in the international transportation market."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.