Escalating Syrian War is Taking a Toll on Trade

Despite the 15.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline of the overall imports’ tonnage in Q1 2015 to 3.47M tons of goods worth $4.17B, 4 out of 9 custom offices revealed higher volumes of imports compared to Q1 2014.

Tyre was the custom office to witness the largest upturn at 48.0% y-o-y increase to 1,049 tons imported in Q1 2015. Similarly, custom offices of Arida and Tripoli saw annual rises of 43.1% and 7.5% in imports’ volume to 27,757 tons and 764,261 tons, respectively. The former’s ascent was largely due to Arida being a safe passage to the North of Syria, while the attenuation of security developments in the latter boosted its trading activity. Port of Saida also saw a 5.4% yearly improvement to 189,309 tons brought in, over the same period.

The main decline in terms of imported tonnage was in the PoB, which illustrated a 22.4% y-o-y plunge from March 2014 to 2.39M tons by March 2015. PoB has suffered over the quarter from labor strikes regarding the forth basin and the shipping halts that characterized all the country’s ports due to the bad weather. Importing activity in terms of volume at Rafik Hariri International Airport (RHIA) also declined, although at a slower pace, by 11.19% y-o-y to 11,564 tons of imported goods. Furthermore, goods received from Masnaa’s custom office declined by 11.02% y-o-y to 53,703 tons in Q1 2015. In fact, the ongoing turbulences at the Lebanese/Syrian border keep on taking their toll on Masnaa’s trading activity. Thus, it is highly expected that the volume of imported goods at the mentioned gate will keep on weakening in the coming period especially after Syrian rebels took control of the Jordanian Nasib border crossing (between Syria and Jordan) in the beginning of April and kidnapped nine Lebanese truck drivers.

Separately, the imported volume through the custom office in Abboudieh remained relatively stagnant at 31,304 tons by March 2015 compared to 31,893 tons by March 2014.

Imports Tonnage Relating to Lebanon’s Main Custom Offices

Escalating Syrian War is Taking a Toll on Trade

Source: Customs

 

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