Saida’s Custom Office Saw the Largest Upturn in Volume Imported

Despite the 5.20% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline of the overall imports’ tonnage in the first five months of 2015 to 6.05M tons of goods worth $7.1B, four out of nine custom offices revealed higher volumes of imports compared to the same period in 2014.

Saida was the custom office to witness the largest upturn at 95.53% y-o-y increase to 589,278 tons imported until May 2015. Similarly, custom offices of Arida, Tyre saw annual rises of 61.07% and 68.64% in imports’ volume to 52,622 tons and 1,737 tons, respectively. The former’s ascent was largely due to Arida being a safe passage to the North of Syria. Port of Tripoli also saw a 10.08% yearly improvement to 1,297,558 tons brought in, over the same period.

The main decline in terms of imported tonnage was in Masnaa, which illustrated a 39.5% y-o-y plunge from May 2014 to 64,948 tons by May 2015 due the ongoing turbulences at the Lebanese/Syrian border. In details, imported goods at the mentioned gate plunged mainly due to Syrian rebels taking control of the Jordanian Nasib border crossing (between Syria and Jordan) in the beginning of April and kidnapping nine Lebanese truck drivers. Furthermore, PoB has suffered from labor strikes regarding the forth basin and the sluggish domestic demand seeing its imports shrink by 15.27% to reach 3.9M tons in volume worth $5.0B.

Importing activity in terms of volume at Rafik Hariri International Airport (RHIA) also declined by a mere 1.73% y-o-y to 23,035 tons of imported goods.

Separately, the imported volume through the custom office in Abboudieh remained relatively stagnant at 50,758 tons by May 2015 compared to 51,067 tons by May 2014. 

Imports Tonnage Relating to Lebanon’s Main Custom Offices

Saida’s Custom Office Saw the Largest Upturn in Volume Imported

Source: Customs

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