KPT registers marked improvement in cargo, container handling

KARACHI: Karachi Port Trust authorities on Monday claimed to had achieved around 4.75% growth in varied categories of cargo handling and 6.05% in container handling during first six half of current fiscal year 2014-2015 as compared to past six months in 2013-2014.

Officials sharing details of improved performance of KPT said current fiscal year's handling of Dry Cargo has registered a growth of 4.79% turning to be 14.982 million tones compared to 14.297 million tones in last half of past fiscal year.

In context of liquid bulk cargo 4.66% growth was registered in current fiscal year with 6.670 million handled compared to 6.373 million tones handled during June to December 2013-2014.

The overall impact was stated to be such that total cargo handled by KPT recorded a growth of 4.75% by handling of 21.652 million tones in the current financial year whereas the same remained to be 20.670 million in last half of 2013-2014.

Similarly, they said Container Handling also gained momentum at Karachi Port as cumulative handling of the total containers at the end of December 2014 (i.e. in first six months of current fiscal year) was 0.833 million TEU whereas it closed at 0.786 million tones during last half of fiscal year 2013-2014.

"Hence we registered a growth of 6.05% in cargo handling," said the KPT officials mentioning that the port handled 0.429 million of TEUs of container import and 0.404 millon TEUs of container export this financial year, by end of December 2014.

Officials said ship handling at KPT has also shown an overall good performance as the container ship handling this year at the end of first six month of financial year 2014-2015 closed at 385 container ships, 106 bulk cargo ships, 114 general cargo ships and 237 oil tankers.

These during last half of 2013-2014 were registered to be 418 container ships, 99 bulk cargo ships, 107 general cargo ships and 201 oil tankers.

Although handling of less container vessels have taken place but KPT was claimed to had handled more container freight this year as compared to last year showing that large and bigger sized container ships are reaching Karachi Port with more cargo on-board.