MLTM announces depressed cargo traffic results in October

Port of Busan

The Korean Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTM, Minister Kwon Do Youp) announced that the estimated total containerized cargo volumes through major Korean ports remained relatively steady at 1,868,000 TEU in October, decreasing 1.6% from 1,898,000 TEU during the same period in 2011.

Among them import / export cargo traffic recorded 1,129,000 TEU, down by 3.9%. Even the offshore cargo volume dropped to 26,000 TEU, decreasing by 34.1%. However comfortingly, the transshipment cargo traffic increased a little to 713,000 TEU, up by 4.3% compared with October in 2011.

The weak performance was attributed to not only the global weak economy, but also domestic economic depression.

Port by port, traffic at Busan Port, the biggest port in South Korea, climbed slightly by 0.6% to 1,423,000 TEU compared with the same period in 2011. Among the figures, the transshipment cargo volume jumped to 688,000 TEU, up by 6.1% over the same period last year.

Container cargo traffic at Gwangyang Port declined to 174,000 TEU, down by 6.6% from last year. Transshipment cargoes fell by 26.6% to 23,000 TEU. A decrease in the demand for cars and petro-chemicals, the main export items at the port, led to the weak figures.

The cargo traffic at Incheon Port dropped sharply to 164,000 TEU, down 8.3%. This result came from the backwarding trade volume with China. < 김보람 기자 brkim@ksg.co.kr >