South Korea sees slight recovery in cargo traffic in July

Port of Busan

South Korea's cargo traffic barely recovered over the year.

The Korean Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTM, Minister Kwon Do Youp) announced that total cargo volumes through major Korean ports recorded 113,220,000 tons in July, climbing slightly 1.4% from 11,700,000 tons during the same period in 2011.

The accumulated traffic from January to July also increased by 3.2% to 781,580,000 tons from 757,400,000 tons compared with the same period in 2011.

Port by port, the cargo traffic at Incheon Port, Daesan Port and Pyeongtaek Dangjin Logistics increased by 10.5%, 8.2%, 8.1% each. The expansion resulted from the trade increase in oil and iron ore.

But the traffic at Pohang Port and Ulsan Port decreased by 4.0%, 2.7% respectively due to a slowdown in cars and soft coal trade.

On the other hand, the container cargo volumes through major Korean ports recorded 1,914,000 TEU in July, rising 5.5% from 1,899,000 TEU over the year.

The total container volume is made up of 1,189,000 TEU of import/export cargo traffic, 698,000 TEU of transshipment cargo traffic, and 26,000 TEU of offshore cargo traffic.

The import/export volume and transshipment volume have marginally increased by 1.9% and 0.4%, respectively. However the offshore volume dropped sharply by 27.5% compared with last July.

Especially the growth of transshipment cargo has been slowed during these days owing to global market depression and slowdown in China's economic growth.

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Port by port, Busan Port, the biggest port in South Korea, showed 1.0% growth compared with last year's figure for total container traffic, recording 1,455,000 TEU.

Container cargo traffic at Gwangyang Port reached 184,000 TEU, increasing by 5.3% over the last year.

Incheon Port saw their container cargo volumes decrease 3 months in a row by 3.9% to 165,000 TEU due to drops in trade with China. < 김보람 기자 brkim@ksg.co.kr >