The Present Situation and Future Prospect of the World Shipping Industry

Ⅰ. Shipping After entering into the 1990’s, the ship-building industry, badly affected by the long recession of the world shipping market, has been growing very slowly, while the competition has been a fierce one. From the shares enjoyed by the major shipping countries in the world, we can see that the first one is Japan which occupied 38%; South Korea came to the second,obtaining 15％; the third is Germany, being 8%. The shipbuilding industry in America is shrinking, owing to the high cost of production. Up to 1993,Japanese ship yards had still been in difficult situation, and many Japanese ship owners would rather order new ships from South Korea because the rising value of Japanese yen made it expensive to build in domestic yards. Nowadays, Japanese shipbuilding industry is exposed to the problem of scarce of labour force. The Korean shipbuilding industry,