The port activity in Panama achieved enterprising 5.3 % growth last year. Not only this advance, but it also recorded the highest ever volume with 7.73m TEUs, despite months of lockdowns that affected many sectors and economies on the world.
All of Panama terminals, except Evergreen’s Colon Container Terminal (CCT) on the Atlantic side, registered growth in 2020. Manzanillo International Terminal-Panama (MIT) revealed an increase of 4.7% to 2.67m TEU. It is a big achievement for the partnership agreement between Seattle-based SSA Marine and a group of Panamanian investors and it is an all-time high.
Stacy Hatfield, general manager of Manzanillo International Terminal-Panama (MIT) explained that situation, “During 2020, container volumes at MIT finished higher than 2019, exceeding 2.6m TEU, driven primarily by transhipment traffic. However, local container and ro-ro cargo volume pushed financial results lower than the year before. We are optimistic that the local market will continue to rebound during 2021, but we are not anticipating significant overall growth this year.”
CTT was the only terminal in the red in terms of volumes. Its record was a decrease in volumes of 8.9% to 714,441 TEU. In addition to CTT supplies, the Caribbean/Central American market and lots of those markets were still in differing states of lockdown.
A supplementary of Hutchison Holdings, Panama Ports Co administrates the ports of Balboa on the Pacific side and Cristobal (Puerto Colon) on the Atlantic side. The company, which had been in a recession more or less two years from now, overcame its services in FY 2020. This situation happened after Panama initiated the expansion of PSA-Panama, a move that drawing attention huge container ships to dock in its ports. For Balboa, the volumes outgrew by an astonishing 1.7% to 1.96m TEU and that’s growth for Cristobal volumes expanded by 2.4% to 1.08m TEU. The major reason for this expansion can be connected to big economies going into lockdowns that gave rise to great shipping lines to dock at transshipment hubs like Panama.
PSA-Panama general manager Alessandro Cassinelli gave the best explanation when he says, “We have handled and accommodated cargo in our yard waiting for countries to reopen and receive their goods. What we call Advanced Transhipment Management. THE Alliance network started to call PSA-Panama in May 2020, a volume which represents an increase vs 2019.”
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