还真会选时间发布这种消息:Cosco Singapore delays 3,cancels 8 delivery of vessels

Cosco Corp. Singapore, the shipbuilding unit of China’s largest shipping company, agreed with two associated companies to delay delivery of three bulk carriers and cancel a US$299 million ($434 million) order for eight more.\n\nThe order for the 11 vessels, signed December 2006, was for three to be delivered by December last year. Those three, of 57,000 deadweight tons each, will now be delivered between August and October this year, the company said in a statement to the Singapore stock exchange.\n\nThe balance will not be built, and payment already made by installments will be refunded, the statement said, adding that the changes have no financial bearing on the 2009 accounts. Hong Kong-listed China Cosco Holdings Co., with its units the purchaser of the vessels, confirmed the delay and cancellation in a statement to Hong Kong’s stock exchange today.\n\nThe worst credit crisis since the Great Depression has made it hard for ship owners to meet payment schedules, forcing them to cancel orders or seek deferrals. The crisis has also cut global trade, increasing the number of old vessels being scrapped.\n\nCosco Singapore said on July 10 it had received requests from two European ship owners to delay deliveries of eight bulk carriers.\n\nThe Baltic Dry Index, a measure of shipping costs for commodities, traded at an average of 2,222 this year, from 8,604 in the same period last year, as demand for iron ore and coal from China slumped.