Panjiva reports 4 percent increase in shipments from February to March

Following a 15 percent decline in United States-bound waterborne shipments from January to February, data from Panjiva, an online search engine with detailed information on global suppliers and manufacturers, showed that shipments were up 4 percent from February to March.

Prior to the last two months worth of data, the trend lines coming from this report have been, like the pace of the global economic recovery, largely uneven. Shipments were up 17 percent from December to January and down 14 percent from November to December. And waterborne shipments have been down sequentially in five of the last seven months.

March shipments hit 900,544, which was a 4 percent gain over February’s 864,632, and it was 2.3 percent down from March 2010’s 902,825. The number of global manufacturers shipping to the U.S. in March was 130,918, which was less than 1 percentage point off from February’s 131,185.

“This looks like a typical seasonal uptick,” said Panjiva CEO Josh Green. “Given all that’s going on across the world, things could look a lot worse.”

The increase from February was no unexpected, as February is often looked as a seasonal low point for global trade activity.

When assessing Panjiva’s numbers and global trade data from other sources, too, Green explained in a recent interview that the first few months of the year combined present a relatively positive indicator of where things stand regarding the global economy.

And with the overall economy still fragile, coupled with increasing oil and gas prices, which has the potential to impact consumer spending, and solid manufacturing and industrial production growth, the overall economic recovery is a bit of a mixed bag at the moment.

In terms of how these factors could impact the pace of the recovery and global trade conditions, Green said that he is still reasonably optimistic, with steady growth still expected. And the modest upticks in consumer sentiment also suggest a relatively stable environment, albeit not one which suggests rapid growth either, which should be reflected in future data.