Not time to pop the champagne yet

TWO new reports paint a picture of increasing confidence and lower costs for major sectors of the shipping industry. Too good to be true? Well no, but the reality is always more complicated than the headlines.

Both reports come from international accountant and shipping adviser Moore Stephens. Its Shipping Confidence Survey says that confidence reached its highest rating in the past three years in the three months to end-August 2017.

Meanwhile, its ship operating costs benchmarking tool, OpCost 2017, reports total annual operating costs in the shipping industry as falling by an average of 1.1 per cent in 2016.

So is this a double dose of good news?

Certainly, increased confidence sounds good and can …