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Hong Kong throughput improves
2009/4/20
Hong Kong port''s container throughput improved slightly last month compared with February and January, but still felt the chilling impact of the global financial crisis.
March throughput dropped 18.9 percent year on year to 1.625 million TEUs, the South China Morning Post reported.
This was an improvement from the 20.6 percent drop in February and the 23.6 percent decline in January.
Throughput last month was higher than February''s 1.305 million TEUs and January''s 1.612 million TEUs.
For the first quarter of this year, container throughput, the city''s only form of cargo shipments, declined 21.1 percent. This was worse than the drop after the dotcom bubble burst in 2001 and during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
May and June might see a modest recovery in throughput because that period was a traditional season for exporters in Hong Kong to ship textiles, clothing and electronic goods to the United States, according to one industry insider.
The Port of Los Angeles, which receives much of the cargo volume from Hong Kong and mainland ports, saw improvement in March, with container throughput falling 9.8 percent year on year, better than the 32.6 percent drop in February and the 10 percent fall in January.
Container throughput in Singapore, the world''s busiest port, fell 14.6 percent last month, an improvement over the 19.8 percent drop in February and the 19.6 percent fall in January.
The throughput of 2.19 million TEUs in March was higher than February''s 1.85 million TEUs and January''s 1.97 million TEUs, according to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
Meanwhile, Tianjin, one of northern China''s busiest ports, saw container throughput increase 5.5 percent to 730,000 TEUs, a turnaround from the declines in January and February. Cargo throughput rose 4.3 percent to 31.9 million tonnes.
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2009/4/20