India, Indonesia, China, and Bangladesh topped the list of hot spots for cargo theft incidents, according to the latest Cargo Theft Report 2021 by supply chain intelligence firm BSI and insurer TT Club.

The report, which highlighted the relative shift in the location of thefts, found that in-transit incidents and those involving vehicles are still the dominant threat globally although the proportion of incidents declined from 87 percent in 2019 to 71 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, theft from storage facilities relatively increased to 25 percent in 2020 from 10 percent the previous year.

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Whilst this may be the case globally, in Asia, the proportion of storage-based incidents was at around 50 percent as a whole. Thefts from warehouses and facilities accounted for the majority of thefts in Indonesia, India, and Bangladesh, with thefts from trucks occurring regularly, the report noted.

A significant portion of incidents in China involved theft directly from facilities, no thanks to a “historically low level of access controls exacerbated by an added vulnerability caused by the backlog of goods in warehouses and facilities as a result of limited movement allowed by COVID-19.”

BSI and TT Club found that the highest number of thefts in Asia involved food and beverage products, whilst electronics and construction materials ranked second and third, respectively.

According to the 2020 report, the proportion of incidents involving trucks was 71 percent, followed by warehouses at 25 percent (from 10 percent in 2019), ocean carriers at less than 1 percent (from 1 percent last year) and other modes including air freight at 4 percent (from 2 percent).

Around the globe, the top countries for cargo theft include Brazil, India, Mexico, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom.