South Korea’s trade traffic growth keeps on rolling

South Korea saw its shipping volumes growth continue.

The Korean Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTM, Minister Kwon Do Youp) announced that total container cargo volume at Korea’s major ports measured 331.34 million tons for the first quarter in 2012, while climbing by 4.5% from 317.18 million tons during the same period last year.

Port by port, Busan Port showed 8.7% growth in exports of timber and imports of fiber compared with last year's figure. Ulsan Port stood out for oil and car exports while growing 5.7% in cargo traffic.

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On the other hand, Incheon Port and Pohang Port saw their cargo volumes decrease each by 2.2% and 2.5%, respectively, due to drops in import trades of oil and cars.

Item by item, oil, ore, and car traffic increased, up by 3.4%, 12.1%, and 17.5% from same quarter in 2011. However, soft coal and steel volumes decreased by 5.4% and 4.1%, respectively.

Total container volume from all regions climbed by 6.9% to 5,391,000 TEU over the previous year. Among that import/export cargo, traffic slightly climbed by 1.5% to 3,265,000 TEU and transshipment cargo traffic soared by 16.5% to 2,000,000 TEU, year-on-year.

Coastwise cargo traffic also increased by 14.2% to 126,000 TEU. The global economic depression and slowdown of growth in China caused increases in import/export volumes to slow. < 김보람 기자 brkim@ksg.co.kr >