Colombian Ports Mull Expansion
The container and gross tonnage handling across all Colombian ports will undergo expansion in 2015, cementing a return to growth following a 2013 downturn, says BMI’s Colombia Shipping Report.
"The domestic container demand will be more muted than we expected, as falling oil prices will weigh on economic growth. We have revised down our real GDP forecast for 2015 from 4.9% to 3.9%, and our Cartagena container throughput forecasts correspondingly," says the report.
The port of Cartagena will see total tonnage volume increase by 4.5% to 21.63mn tonnes in 2015, and will average growth of 5.3% to 2019.
Container traffic at Cartagena will grow by 7.9% to 2.22mn twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2015. Growth to 2019 will average 9.4%.
Volume at the Pacific port of Buenaventura will rise by 3.3% to 9.72mn tonnes in 2015, while container traffic will rise by 4.8%, to reach 526,999TEUs.
