Cargo at seaports grows 3.8% in Jan

The amount of cargo processed at Korea’s seaports gained 3.8 percent last month from a year earlier, the government said yesterday.

The volume of cargo handled at the country’s seaports came to 111.82 million tons in January, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. The figure marks the largest cargo volume handled by the country’s ports in January.

“The increase was helped by more transshipment cargo handled at local ports and a rise in trade for such goods as petroleum products and textiles,” the ministry said.

Transshipment cargo, which refers to products that go through local ports en route to a final destination, soared 21.3 percent on-year to 691,000 20-foot-equivalent units (TEUs).

The volume of textiles and petroleum products handled at ports gained 9.6 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively, although numbers for coal, steel products and autos declined last month compared to the year before.

Busan, the country’s largest harbor, ranked as the sixth-largest port in the world last month. The amount of container cargo handled there jumped 10.1 percent on-year to 1.35 million TEUs in January, the report showed.

Yonhap