(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) –Sri Lanka’s Port of Colombo recorded a 16.2% growth for the 1st quarter 2018 over same quarter last year In container handling according to Alphaliner Monthly 2018.
Among container Ports worldwide, Colombo Growth rate is second only to the Port of Singapore which has recorded 16.5% growth over 2017. It is also a very significant achievement when compared against the Port of Colombo’s 2017 figures with 8.3% growth of 2017, the Sri Lanka’s Ports Authority (SLPA) said.
SLPA said the Colombo Port received 1.7 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in the first quarter of 2018, which is a 16.2 percent growth from a year earlier. Colombo Port’s transshipment volumes grew 20.9 percent to 1.32 million TEUs, with March volumes up 19.4 percent to 477,043 TEUs. With this growth, the Port of Colombo has leaped ahead of many other Asian Ports, Major European Ports and Dubai as well. According to Alphaliner global port rankings the top container ports such as Singapore marked 16.5% ranking number one, the Port of Colombo marked 16.2% at number two, Port of Xiamen – (China) 11.6% at number three, Antwerp (Belgium),10.7% at number four and Ningbo – Zhoushan (China),10.4% ranked at number five. Sri Lanka’s Ports Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe said recently, that the Colombo Port expects to handle 7.0 million containers in 2018, up 12.9 percent from the 6.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) handled in 2017 with joint marketing by the Jaya Container Terminal of the SLPA, South Asia Gateway Terminal of the John Keells Holdings and Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT) of China’s CM Ports. Recently the three terminal operators signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to operate collectively to promote the Port of Colombo.
The new collective agreement is expected to minimize the total turnaround time of all container vessels. Further, through the new agreement, terminals will also be able to promote the Port of Colombo collectively and collaboratively in the arena of international maritime business. Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port was ranked the 13th best connected port in the world in 2017, moving up five places from 18, a year earlier, according to an index compiled by Drewry, a UK based shipping and maritime consultancy.
Under South Asia, Colombo Port was ranked the best connected. The SLPA said the recognition of credibility towards the management has encouraged the employees of SLPA to contribute towards efficient service along with collaborative support by all parties and stake holders engaged in the port operations to keep SLPA’s productivity at a steadily and sustainably increasing rate. Creating history, the Port of Colombo for the first time has recorded 6.2 million container operations in 2017. For its dedicated performance to up lift the position of the Port of Colombo in the world maritime map, Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) was awarded the Ports Authority of the Year Award by the Global Ports Forum (GPF) in 2018.
