The Coupa Business Spend Index shows purchase orders in the Middle East and North Africa recovered more quickly than freight costs after disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. The divergence highlights why procurement, logistics and finance need to monitor demand, transportation and risk pricing together rather than relying on a single recovery signal.
Purchase Orders Reveal The Break
The Coupa Business Spend Index, built with the MIT Data Science Lab, captures an operational sequence hidden by broad market benchmarks. Among businesses billed in the Middle East and North Africa, weekly purchase order value fell about 48% at the trough from a pre-disruption run rate of roughly $160 million. Year-over-year order growth swung from 159% in February to negative 64% in March, while invoice growth slowed from 60% to 17%. Purchase orders registered the decision to stop or defer spending before payables exposed the slowdown.
Weekly order value regained its prior pace after roughly 13 weeks, at the end of May, as buyers found other routes, suppliers, and terms. The line slipped below that pace from mid-June. In July, both order and invoice value for regional buyers were down 31% year over year, and order value flowing to suppliers domiciled in the region was down 35%. The collapse of the ceasefire on July 7 reinforced the volatility of the recovery.
The sequence matters because recovery speed alone can create false confidence. A return to an earlier order run rate may reflect temporary routing, short-term supplier substitutions, or revised commercial terms. It does not establish that capacity, service reliability, and landed cost have stabilized. Commitments must therefore be monitored alongside the conditions required to fulfill them.
Freight Pricing Demands Exposure Level Planning
Freight pricing followed a different curve. Matched freight and logistics inflation reached 9.2% year over year in July, its highest reading since the disruption and still accelerating. Chemicals peaked at 8.5% in May and eased to 3.1% by July, sharpening the evidence that the transport burden had its own persistence.
War-risk insurance explains part of the mechanism. Before the conflict, coverage for a Hormuz transit ran at about 0.15% to 0.25% of vessel hull value. It later rose to 3% to 10%, putting the possible premium on a $150 million tanker at up to $15 million for a single transit. That repricing enters landed cost through insurance, carrier terms, capacity, and variable lead times. It can remain after oil prices or purchasing volumes appear calmer because carriers and insurers retain recent volatility in their risk models.
Buyer behavior also shows why averages can mislead. Among U.S. companies already buying from the region before the destabilization, the median buyer cut purchase order value by about 23% over the following five months and 34% in July alone. The same buyers held roughly flat elsewhere, making the pullback specific to regional exposure. Within that cohort, 39% raised orders and 47% raised invoicing.
Across all North American buyers, order value to regional suppliers rose 65%, or roughly $460 million, lifted by a small number of very large buyers and companies without earlier supplier relationships. The measures describe different populations. Existing-relationship cohorts reveal retrenchment within the installed network, while aggregate totals capture new flows and concentration.
A practical response starts with three linked views. Track purchase orders and invoices separately to distinguish commitments from settlement. Map lanes, carriers, suppliers, and second-tier dependencies to actual exposure. Then isolate insurance, capacity, and lead-time premiums inside cost-to-serve. Backup carrier relationships and selective contract renegotiation should follow mapped risk.
Risk Costs Need Their Own Decision Rules
Order volumes and freight economics can follow different paths through the same disruption, making separate monitoring essential for reliable planning. Tracking commitments alongside insurance costs, carrier availability and lane performance provides a clearer basis for sourcing, inventory and transportation decisions than purchasing activity alone.
