South Korea-based shipbuilder Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction put three containerships up for sale in August. This followed a payment dispute with Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), which failed to pay its final instalments of the purchase price of the post-Panamax vessels.

Hanjin recently completed the construction of the ships, each of which has a capacity of 6,500 twentyfoot equivalent units (TEUs). The ships are worth nearly US$100mn each and were advertised for sale by the shipbroker ICAP Shipping. However, Hadi Parjand, managing director of IRISL's London office, said the payment dispute had been sorted out and the ships were ready to be delivered. He added that he was unaware of any other issues that would have encouraged Hanjin to advertise the ships for sale.

We forecast 2009 GDP growth in Iran at 1.4% in 2009 (was 2.4%), and are projecting 3.4% in 2010 (was 3.8%). Political turmoil in the wake of the disputed June elections, along with Iran’s international isolation remain downside risks. The forecast for 2009-2013 is for an annual average GDP growth rate of 3.4% per annum. This will still represent a slowing of the pace relative to the average of 5.6% achieved in the preceding five-year period 2004-2008. The effect on our freight-traffic forecasts for the period as a whole is, therefore, negative comparing the next five years with the preceding five. Despite a question mark over Indian involvement, agreement on the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is on the cards, but further delays can be expected and this mega-project will not come on-stream until after the end of our five-year forecast period.

Political risk will be a factor hanging over all freight modes. We maintain earlier reductions in the pipeline throughput projection, reflecting the impact of growing domestic demand on exports, and insufficient new investment. Because of ongoing restrictions on the supply of US spare parts for Iranian owned civilian aircraft, we think airfreight growth will still be held back by capacity limitations. Shipping traffic forecasts have been pegged back given the downturn in the global shipping cycle. Taking all these factors into account, our forecasts for freight volume across all modes, measured in millions of tonnes, stands at an annual average of 3.3% in the 2009-2013 period, marginally behind of the rate of expansion of the economy as a whole. This suggests the transport sector is a bottleneck for the wider economy.

According to our latest estimates, transport and communications GDP rose by 4.9% in 2008 compared with general economic growth of 4.7%. For the 2009-2013 forecast period, we expect the transport and communications sector to expand marginally faster than GDP, helped along by growth in the communications sub-sector. It will achieve average annual growth of 3.5%, versus 3.4% for overall GDP.

The total value of transport and communications GDP will rise to US$33.5bn in nominal terms by 2013, representing 6.8% of Iran’s GDP. Projections based on employment figures compiled for the ILO in 1996 suggest that Iran’s transport and communications sector employed 3.41mn people, or 20.5% of the labour force, in 2008. This seems a rather high proportion to us, compared with other countries.