The mainland's A-share listed shipping companies suffered a loss of 7.8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) in the first half of this year, the 21st Century Business Herald reported on Tuesday.
Although the third quarter is a traditionally busy season, the shipping companies' performance cannot improve much in the second half of the year due to excess capacity, experts said.
They warned that rising fuel prices are gradually eroding the industry's profits and the hard times are not over for shipping firms.
Only four companies of the 13 made a profit, including Cosco Shipping Co Ltd and China Merchants Energy Shipping Co Ltd.
China Cosco Holding Co Ltd lost 4.87 billion yuan in the first half of this year, after a 1.71 billion yuan loss in the first half of last year, down 79.72 percent.
The company's earnings in the third quarter are expected to be in the red, Cosco announced at its shareholders' meeting on Aug 30.
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 
