Q. Tell us about the expansions that happened in 2019 at Transworld Group Singapore?
We had to be a lot more watchful this year, but I can still say that 2019 has been a better year than 2018 for us. We have been able to expand into more locations within the Asian subcontinent and it has given us the kind of flexibility very much required. For instance, in China we were not very strong because we always felt it is a place for only mainline players, so there is no place for a regional operator like us. Likewise in the Middle East we thought it was more for the far east-middle east operators. But we have expanded into these locations, and our most recent foray was in Dubai where until recently we were operating through an agent. It was functioning fine, but I believe our strength comes with our own offices in these economies. In 10 different strong economies of Asia we have our own offices as Transworld GLS. We know where the connections are between the locations and we don’t wish to follow what the other operators are doing from the west coast.
Q. At the macro level people are talking about slowdown, the impact of US-China trade war and some geopolitical issues. How do these effect an operator? The slowdown overall would come to America and China because they are involved in the trade war. China basically being the biggest supplier to the world may, in my view, loose some business, which means there could be some shift of that loss into other major economies like Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. These are very strong economies in Asia and even India might benefit from the trade war. The mainlines doing China-America services may suffer because of this trade war, but for regional operators, the strong regional economics are getting even stronger.
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