Interview with Alain Bagnaud, Director, Reed Global Transport Group

Sinergy Cargo, the Italian member of the FPS network of independent freight forwarders and consolidators, has opened a multimodal container, bulk cargo handling and storage center near the Port of Genoa.

The latest update of global freight data collected by the International Transport Forum at the OECD shows global trade volumes are slowing down.

IATA's latest Airline Industry Forecast predicts average international freight growth of three percent per year over the next five years. That would mean volumes will total 34.5 million tonnes by 2016, 4.8 million tonnes more than the 2011 total.

Based on its modeling and country risk analytics, D+B predicts sluggish global growth will continue in many markets right into 2013.

The DHL Global Connectedness Index, a comprehensive analysis of the state of globalization around the world, concludes that the world is less globally connected today than it was in 2007. The report, drawing on over one million data points from 2005 to 2011, documents how global connectedness, measured by international flows of trade, capital, information and people, grew robustly from the report's baseline year of 2005 to 2007, and then dropped sharply at the onset of the financial crisis. Despite modest gains since 2009, global connectedness has yet to recapture its pre-crisis peak.