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PASSENGER traffic at the facilities operated by the
Philippine Ports Authorities (PPA) posted its first
increase in many months, suggesting that the decrease
has already bottomed out; but, cargo and ship traffic
remained sluggish.
Latest
data from the PPA showed that passenger traffic for the
eight month period ending August increased by 184,000
people to 28.9 million from last year’s 28.71 million.
“This is
associated with the increase of fast craft and RoRo
(Roll-on Roll-off) vessels plying the Batangas-Mindoro
and Batangas Romblon, Batangas-Calapan and Iloilo-Bacolod
trips,” PPA said in its report.
The
state firm added that the people are also heading to
tourist destinations such as Puerto Galera and
Palawan in Southern Tagalog and Boracay and Tagbilaran in the southern Visayas.
PPA said
it first noticed the downward trend of people crossing
seas on ship in 2001, when people preferred to ride
airplanes, which is much faster and, lately, cheaper.
Almost
all of the passengers came from the domestic traffic and
only 25,000 were from the foreign traffic.
Last
year, about 20,000 passengers came from abroad. Most of
them were concentrated on the Zamboanga port of mostly
traders coming from Sandakan, Malaysia and vice versa.
On the
other hand, cargo throughput increased by some 5.66
million metric tons compared with last year, but mostly
driven by foreign cargoes.
In its
report, PPA said that it handled 105.57 million metric
tons from January to August from the previous year’s 100
million metric tons of cargo. More than half of the
cargoes are foreign.
Domestic
cargoes decreased by 1.5 percent or by about 741,000
metric tons, while foreign goods increased by more than
12 percent or by about 6.4 million metric tons.
PPA
report said that the export component rose by 30 percent
to 24.14 million metric tons, while import goods
recorded an increase of about 2.28 percent to 35 million
metric tons.
Increases were seen at the ports of Surigao, Nasipit,
Puerto Princesa, PPA said.
In terms
of containerized cargoes, PPA said that it still
realized an increase of about 6 percent to 2.55 million
standard containers from the previous year’s 2.4 million
TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units).
Container volume rose even if many of the shippers
prefer to transport fruits via trucks that use the
Strong Republic Nautical Highway, a series of connecting
ports from Luzon to Mindanao.
PPA said
that it had seen container traffic increases in the
ports of Batangas, Davao, Limay, Zamboanga, Manila
International Container Terminal, Manila South Harbor
and Cagayan de Oro.
Ship
calls, meanwhile dropped by 1.2 percent to 200,643
vessels from the previous 203,079 vessels as a result of
the decrease in the domestic traffic. |
