Last year economic forecasters were optimistic that the Asia Pacific reason would continue to drive the world economy, but some of the recent statistics show that the area is suffering as badly as the rest of the world. The Singapore government, for example, has predicted that the economy there will shrink from 2 – 5% over the next 12 months. In the Port of Singapore, the volume throughput fell by 14% in December 2008. Performance in Japan was worse – exports fell by about one third during 2008, partly due to the high value of the yen. This may mean that there are new opportunities for innovative types of logistics services in the area, but it remains to be seen what these will be.