Cargo volume up 5% despite port congestion

MANILA, Philippines - The volume of cargo shipped in and out of the seaports in the Philippines grew faster last year amid the congestion in the ports of Manila resulting from the truck ban imposed by the city government of Manila, the state-run Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) reported over the weekend.

PPA general manager Juan Sta. Ana said Philippine cargo volume went up by 4.6 percent to 211.2 million metric tons last year from 201.9 million metric tons in 2013 despite the congestion at the Manila International Container Terminal of International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) and Manila South Harbor of Asian Terminals Inc. (ATI).

“Despite the ban, the volume of containers in the Manila ports, composed of the Manila South Harbor and the MICT, still managed to post a modest increase,” Sta. Ana said.

Last year’s volume growth was slightly faster than the 4.4 percent increase registered in 2013 with 201.9 million metric tons from 193.44 million metric tons a year earlier.

Data showed that cargo shipped out of the Philippines grew 7.4 percent to 133.29 million metric tons from 124.05 million metric tons in 2013 as imports increased by 11.3 percent to 67.56 million metric tons while exports inched up by 3.77 percent to 65.73 million metric tons.

PPA attributed the increase to the large exportation of river sand, magnetite sand, crude minerals, nickel ore, limestone ore, clinker and slag and coconut oil and copra, fruits and fish as well as the sizeable importation of fuel, coal, grains, and fertilizers.

On the other hand, cargo shipped within the Philippines was almost flat at 77.91 million metric tons from 77.86 million metric tons the previous year.

The PPA reported that container volume went up by four percent to 5.43 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) from 5.23 million TEUS as foreign container traffic rose 3.4 percent to 3.29 million TEUs while domestic container traffic grew 4.9 percent to 2.14 million TEUs.

“All aspects of containerized operations went up modestly for 2014 despite the Manila port congestion and the slowdown in some areas of operations like Davao,” PPA said.