Maritime transportation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Maritime transportation - Essay Example It was forecasted to rise between 6.5-7% per annum over the next ten years (MPA, 2012). The reason behind Singapore’s maritime industry’s vibrant success is its strategic location and constant competition evolved into a strategic center for maritime business. Situated in the center of a complex global web of trade routes and connected to over 600 ports in over 120 countries, Singapore is nothing less than a global hub. A ‘hub’ can be defined as a well-connected node in a network, and throughout history, successful hubs have been the ones that offer focal points of opportunities, growth and innovation. Singapore has been identified as not only one of the 40 mega regions, which signify large markets with significant economic potential, but it is also one of the world’s most important maritime countries as per the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Singapore, apart from being a premier global hub port, is also the busiest port in the world considering shipping tonnage alone, which amounts to more than 120,000 vessel calls annually. In 2004, only the total vessel arrivals at the port exceeded one billion gross tons for the first time in Singapore’s maritime history. Moreover Singapore offers around 20 million tons of bunkers supplied each year to ships globally. Additionally, Singapore offers reliable and efficient cargo handling, the Global Competitiveness Report 2006-7 ranks Singapore as having the best Quality for Port Infrastructure. Singapore holds 70% of the global jack-up rig-building market and more than 65% of the world’s floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) conversion market. Its technological adeptness is observable through the wide range of maritime services available, including pilot age, towage, fresh water supply, crew changes, ship supply and repair as well as expert building facilitie s (Tan, 2005). Singapore is also a fast developing Petrochemical