Trade Activity in Masnaa Customs’ Office Plunged in H1 2016

Trade activity at Lebanon’s main customs offices witnessed a rise in value during the first half (H1) of 2016. As stated by the Lebanese Customs, total imports grew yearly 6.97% to $9.39B by June 2016, due to the rise in imported volume of goods from 7.58M tons up to June 2015 to 9.08M up to June 2016. As for exports, total exports plunged by a yearly 11.06% to $1.38B, which can be justified to the fall in volume from 1.03M tons by June 2015 to 0.8M by June 2016.

The breakdown of transported goods by customs’ office revealed that Port of Beirut (PoB) occupies the largest share of value of goods, followed by Rafic Hariri Airport, and Port of Tripoli. In details, 74.79% of the country’s imports value and 52.21% of the exports’ value went through PoB’s customs office in H1 2016, compared to a share of 70.28% of total imports and 48.70% of total exports during the same period, last year. As for Rafic Hariri Airport, it processed a total of 18.19% of imports value and 34.36% of Lebanon’s exports value, by June 2016. Port of Tripoli occupied 4.71% of imports value and 6.86% of exports value by June 2016.

As for tonnage, it is noticeable that both Port of Beirut and Port of Tripoli account for 92% of total traded weight, while Rafic Hariri Airport grasped 0.5%, maintaining high values of trade. Thus, this shows that products traded through the airport aren’t of large weights.

Due to the ongoing political insecurity in Lebanon’s neighboring countries, several customs’ offices have witnessed significant falls in both imports’ and exports’ values. Particularly, Masnaa was the worst performer during the first half of 2016, where total exports and imports’ value dropped by 69.93% and 67.44% to reach $33.06M and $42.79M, respectively, by June 2016

Imports Tonnage by Customs Office by June 2016