BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.3
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Jet fuel consumption will not surpass 2019 levels until 2025, Trend reports with reference to Fitch Solutions.
“Jet fuel is notably lagging the recovery overall. Based on a basket of around 50 countries representing almost three-quarters of global demand, we estimate that jet fuel demand in August was around 70 percent of its 2019 level. Air cargo traffic is strong, with cargo tonne kilometres rising 8 percent above their 2019 levels in August, but passenger travel remains weak, with revenue passenger kilometres 56 percent lower in August 2021 than August 2019,” said the company in its latest report.
Fitch Solutions noted that numerous restrictions on cross-border travel remain in place and some behaviours adopted during the pandemic, such as conducting business remotely, will likely drag on demand for several years.
“We do not forecast jet fuel consumption to surpass its 2019 levels on an annual average basis until 2025. The broader fuels basket has returned to around its pre-pandemic levels and the impetus behind demand is shifting from post-pandemic normalisation to organic growth. Increasingly, this will skew consumption away from developed and towards emerging markets, as structural demand declines set in, eroding consumption in the former,” reads the report.
Fitch Solutions’ analysts point out that while Covid-19 will continue to be an important factor driving the trends in global consumption, its influence is waning.
“As vaccination rates rise, and populations grow increasingly fatigued by lockdowns, governments are tending to react less forcefully to new
outbreaks of the coronavirus, opting for softer and more targeted containment measures. As such, while the spread of new variants will pose lingering risk to demand over 2022 and 2023, the risks are generally fading.”
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