Port of Beirut (PoB) continued to experience a bolstered activity, in the month of May as receipts surged by 12.71% year-on-year (y-o-y) to $2.23M monthly high in the last 5 years. This might be due to the difficulties connected to land transportation following the security situation in war ridden Syria, pushing up sea shipments.
The increase in revenues during May pushed up the total receipts of the port in the first five months of the year by 7.49% to $94.48M, also recording its highest level in 5 years. Nevertheless, the monthly increase in the volume of local twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) during April and May was not sufficient enough to offset the first quarter’s slump. Thus, total container activity including transshipment (TEU+TS) remained in the red with a 7.31% y-o-y decline to 450,544 containers during Jan-May period. As a matter of fact, Container activity excluding transshipment dropped by an annual 2.83% to 300,234 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) while TS movement downturned by a yearly 15.14% to 150,310 TEU, over the same period.
The total volume of merchandise (imported and exported) declined by a yearly 10.66% to 3.19M tons. In contrast, imported cars went up by 4.22% y-o-y to reach 39,842 cars. In addition, the number of vessels that docked at the Lebanon’s major port went down from 837vessels by May 2014 to 704 vessels, by May 2015.
MSC and CMA CGM, the two major shipping/logistic firms operating in the port, witnessed yearly falls in transshipment activity of 18.86% and 18.03% to 79,867 TEU and 59,459 TEU, respectively.
PoB Revenues by May
Source: Port of Beirut