Lebanon’s main port, Port of Beirut, saw its revenue shrink 7.52% year-on-year (y-o-y) in the first 2 months of 2015 to $32.05M. This might be attributed to truckers’ stikes protesting against the project to fill the port’s fourth basin.
Activity on the harbor weakened as displayed by total container activity (including transshipment) which fell 16.23% yearly to 158,876 TEU. This tumble was due to the 14.66% and 19.05% declines in container activity excluding transshipment and transshipment volume to 104,093 TEU and 54,783 TEU, respectively.
MSC’s transshipment volume and that of CMA CGM dropped 25.09% and 9.40% to 29,199 TEU and 23,535 TEU, respectively.
Looking at the trade activity, the number of vessels docking at the port dropped 17.30% y-o-y to 263 by February 2015.total volume of exported and imported merchandise plunged by 18.47% to 1.14M tons. Moreover, the number of imported cars dropped 7.55% to 13,879 cars.
Port of Beirut by February
Source: Port of Beirut