newstodate.aero
Aug 18, 2009 (newstodate): Iceland's economy hit rock bottom during the ongoing world economic and financial crisis, but the country's air cargo industry is doing relatively well, all things considered.
-The air cargo market has been rather stable, even improving, while of course affected by the seasonal down-turn in volumes during the slack summer season, says Arnar Bjarnason, TVG Zimsen manager airfreight and business development.
-The big question is now: how will the remaining months of 2009 perform? There are still some big outstanding issues to be solved in Iceland's economy, and they will have a bearing on the market's performance. But so far the government has taken a series of positive measures and the future may not be too critical.
-While we will, in my opinion, probably not see anything like the boom in 2008 again, we have seen exports blooming again due to also the very low value of the Icelandic Crown. Thus we have seen much re-export traffic of machinery and electronics, and Icelandic seafood is also much in demand in our export markets.
-So even when air cargo imports were down, exports were still rising in volumes. Now we are seeng a more balanced proportion between air cargo exports and imports while exports still holds the lead.
-In my opinion we will see a sustained recovery in the coming months, but in the longer term our comparison should probably be with the years 2003, 2004 and 2004, rather than 2008, says Mr Bjarnason.
-The air cargo market has been rather stable, even improving, while of course affected by the seasonal down-turn in volumes during the slack summer season, says Arnar Bjarnason, TVG Zimsen manager airfreight and business development.
-The big question is now: how will the remaining months of 2009 perform? There are still some big outstanding issues to be solved in Iceland's economy, and they will have a bearing on the market's performance. But so far the government has taken a series of positive measures and the future may not be too critical.
-While we will, in my opinion, probably not see anything like the boom in 2008 again, we have seen exports blooming again due to also the very low value of the Icelandic Crown. Thus we have seen much re-export traffic of machinery and electronics, and Icelandic seafood is also much in demand in our export markets.
-So even when air cargo imports were down, exports were still rising in volumes. Now we are seeng a more balanced proportion between air cargo exports and imports while exports still holds the lead.
-In my opinion we will see a sustained recovery in the coming months, but in the longer term our comparison should probably be with the years 2003, 2004 and 2004, rather than 2008, says Mr Bjarnason.