Qatar’s maritime sector witnessed a stupendous 86% year-on-year surge in cargo through its Hamad, Doha and Al Ruwais ports in December 2022 as the country successfully hosted the FIFA World Cup, reports The India Shipping News.
More than 98% increase
The three ports saw 5% more vessel calls on an annualised basis and the livestock handled through these ports registered more than 98% increase in the review period, said Mwani Qatar. The number of ships calling on Qatar’s three ports stood at 267 in December 2022, which grew 4.71% year-on-year but was down 0.74% month-on-month.
More cargo movement
As many as 3.031 ships had called on three ports in 2022, which was 10% lower than those in 2021.
Hamad Port – whose strategic geographical location offers opportunities to create cargo movement towards the upper Gulf, supporting countries such as Kuwait and Iraq and south towards Oman – saw as many as 148 vessels call on the port in the review period. The port saw a total of 1,569 vessels for the whole of 2022.
The general cargo handled through the three ports was 140,601 tonnes in December 2022, which showed an 86.04% annual decline although it fell 1.46% month-on-month in the review period.
Hamad Port – whose multi-use terminal is designed to serve the supply chains for the RORO (vehicles), grains and livestock – handled 55,125 freight tonnes (F/T) of bulk and 74,517F/T of breakbulk in December last year.
The Hamad Port was seen handling 520,324F/T of bulk and 983,033F/T of break-bulk in 2022. On a cumulative basis, the general cargo movement through the three ports totalled 1.6mn tonnes during January-December 2022, which registered a 2% decline on an annualised basis.
The three ports had handled 38,867 livestock in December 2022, which almost doubled on a yearly basis and more than doubled on monthly basis.
Hamad Port was seen handling 1,317 livestock in December and a total of 45,808 head for the whole of 2022. The three ports together handled 205,608 livestock for January-December 2022, which fell 38.21% year-on-year.
Container handling
The container handling through three ports stood at 128,688 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), which fell 2.02% year-on-year but shot up 10.97% in December 2022.
Hamad Port, which is the largest eco-friendly project in the region and internationally recognised as one of the largest green ports in the world, saw 127,770 TEUs of containers handled in December 2022. The port was seen handling a total of 1.41mn TEUs in 2022.
The container handling through the three ports fell 8.28% year-on-year to 1.44mn TEUs during January-December 2022.
The container terminals have been designed to address the increasing trade volume, enhancing ease of doing business as well as supporting the achievement of economic diversification, which is one of the most important goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030.
The three ports handled 6,263 RORO in December 2022, which registered a 6% and 9.74% decline on yearly and monthly basis respectively.
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Source: India Shipping News
