The Association of International Shipping Lines (AISL) yesterday said recession in the United States will mean lower profits for them.

AISL president Octavio Katigbak, also K-Line Philippines president, said most of the shipping companies said it follows that recession will mean weak trade which will mean weak shipments meaning less business for them.

On top of that, liners need to upgrade their vessels this year which will eat into their profits.

All shipping lines, he said are conducting plans and strategizing to get markets other than the US.

Imports from the US amounted to about $6.6 billion last year, which is 17 percent share of the total imports while exports to US amounted to $6.714 billion, which is 16.96 percent of the country's total exports.

For the past 5 years, the average imports from US amounted to $6.598.

Top merchandize imports from US were industrial manufacturers, food and food preparation, resource-based products and consumer manufacturers.

"There will be a slowdown in cargo volume, everybody is putting up a plan and all shipping companies will be looking at outside US. We'll be looking at countries where we see growth," Katigbak said.

"But you know the crisis in the US affects everybody. that's the main problem," he added.

Last year, growth in the container traffic was flat and he expects that the growth will remain the same for this year.

He added that aside from US crisis, other factors that led to a flat growth was the strengthening peso which also affected the trade volume.

US has given $500,000 grant to the Bureau of Customs for data access and transparency system that will allow BOC to have an advance information such as export information arriving from the United States.