The grand total of full
containers (deepsea,
coastwise and
transhipment) handled at
the eight commercial ports
in SA in the first quarter
of 2017 was 835 795 TEUs
– up 4.16% on the 802 385
TEUs in Q1 2016.
That growth rate is
well below the current
global growth rate of
6.6% calculated by the
International Monetary
Fund (IMF)
and miserably
less than the
double-digit
growth at SA
ports in the
not-so-distant
past.
Of those totals, 451 185
full TEUs were landed in
Q1 2017 – 4.6% up on the
431 223 TEUs landed in
Q1 2016. A total of 384 610
full TEUs were shipped in
Q1 2017 compared to 371
162 TEUs shipped in Q1
2016 – growth of 3.6%.
But these figures
include transhipments
and coastwise movements.
The most relevant figures
from an SA perspective
are those for full, deepsea
boxes landed (imports) and
full, deepsea boxes shipped
(exports) – excluding
transhipments/coastwise.
In Q1 2017, imports
totalled 341 444 TEUs,
up 4.25% on the 327 523
TEUs of Q1 2016. For
exports, the Q1 2017 total
was 279 773 TEUs, a
growth of 4.4% on the 267
930 TEUs of
Q1 2016.
Effectively,
the message
is that there
is only slow
growth in both
the grand totals of full
boxes handled at SA ports
and of those which are SA
imports and exports. And,
despite a desire by both
government and industry
to grow exports in favour
of imports, both categories
are growing at much the
same pace – with exports
growing only 0.15% more
than imports.
