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Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said Kaohsiung port would handle 9.8 million TEUs this year. This is enough to keep the island's busiest port in sixth place in the world rankings but it is still short of the 10 million TEU target set by the port for 2006.
The MOTC did not give the throughput figures of individual ports, saying only that in the first 11 months of this year, Taiwan's international harbours handled 8.92 million TEUs, up 2.68 percent over last year.
The 10 million target was always an optimistic one for Taiwan's embattled port. In 2005, Kaohsiung handled 9.47 million boxes, but manufacturing has now largely moved to the mainland and the transhipment cargo the port so heavily depends upon is following fast. Shipping lines have adjusted port calls to the fast-growing mainland ports of Xiamen and Fuzhou just across the straits.
Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau chief Hsieh Ming-huei said that growth for a port was more important than world ranking, and this is especially so for Kaohsiung. It plans to begin construction soon on container terminal six that will add two million TEU capacity to the port and ease pressure on its already stretched container facilities. The extra capacity will only be online in 2011 and shipping watchers believe that by then, there will be little cargo to fill it.
CargoNews Asia
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