Spain, the EU logistics market most affected by the coronavirus
Transport Intelligence (Ti) foresaw in its precorona’s estimates that the Spanish logistics market would lead Europe’s growth in 2020. Following the arrival of the pandemic, it is the third most affected by the virus in the EU.
This is confirmed by a report prepared by the research and analysis company Transport Intelligence (Ti) on the impact of the disease on the global logistics market by 2020. However, in the consultant’s data compared with its growth expectations for this year, Spain is the worst off in the EU due to the health crisis. From an estimated growth of 2.2% for 2020, the Spanish logistics market will suffer, at best, a contraction of 2.2%.
The analysis of the British firm places Germany, Italy and Spain in the top-3 countries with the greatest impact on their logistics markets. Nevertheless, German growth prospects before the epidemic in 2020 foresaw an improvement in logistics activity of 1.2% compared to 2019, while in the case of Italy, it estimated a flat growth of 0.5%. On the other hand, the report presented Spain as the European country with the best growth prospects, at 2.2%, even above the 1.7% EU average.
In this sense, considering the estimated growth trend of 2.2% in Spain, after the corona’s impact, the report shows two possible scenarios depending on the evolution of the pandemic. If the impact of the crisis remains at similar parameters as at the end of March, the Spanish logistics market contraction would be around 2.1% compared to the previous year. If the situation worsens due to a greater proliferation of infected people and, therefore, a greater extension of the lockdown measures and industrial closures, the recession of this sector could reach 16.3% (Fig. 1).
At European level, the economic slowdown of the logistics market is expected to be 1.4%, while in the worst scenario it would increase to 17%. At a global level, the figures fluctuate between losses of 2% and 10.2%.
Despite these results, the report notes that not all the corona effects have been negative, as certain activities such as online retailing, ecommerce and the last mile have been benefited. In particular, Ti mentions the food sector, which is working at full capacity to supply basic products to the confined population. In this sense, some companies have even compared the corona’s impact with the Christmas’ volume of sales.
Source: elmercantil.com