Webinar: Impacts of COVID-19 on the Maritime Industry

NAMEPA attended The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology’s (IMarEST) webinar on the Impacts of COVID-19 on the Maritime Industry.  Here, viewers learned how not only was trade negatively impacted, but the pandemic had severe impacts on the seafarers as well, holding them captive on the sea while there were strict enforcements saying they could not return home for health concerns.

The crew change crisis has raised questions within the maritime industry and will continue to be a consideration for the future of seafarers.  Additionally, the webinar demonstrated how the industry is now better equipped to handle large dips in the trade. In a series of bad economic news, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) predicted that the typical 2.9% annual growth in maritime trade that has occurred for the past two decades will fall to 2.4%.  With the problems that arose due to the pandemic and the consequential solutions we saw as a result, the maritime industry has learned from the struggles and is now recovering.