Asian ports dominate in container traffic in the world

There was always competition between Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore port to grab container traffic from Asian counties. This year 2015, too Shanghai maintained the number one position over   Singapore, Hong Kong and dominated its place in the region. Out of top 10 container ports in the world nini are from East Asia. Chinese six ports are within these top 10 ports. This indicated that how China and Asia are dominating container traffic in the world
CHINESE HIDDEN STRATEGY: Hong Kong  is not part of China but it is Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. China is trying to suppress Hong Kong in  many ways including indirectly control of Hong Kong port traffic. Hong Kong is main Gateway port of South China. Chinese cargo comes to Hong Kong from this Ghaugzhou hinterland.  But China has constructed new container terminal (Nansha Container Terminal) above Hong Kong port in Gangzau region. It has prevented  container traffic flows of main land China to  Hong Kong port. This is one of the reason of discriminating cargo throughput of Hong Kong since 2002. The throughput was down 9.5 per cent in 2015. It was also down 14.1 per cent drop in 2009 in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis.
 Hong Kong is main Transshipment port of South China which connects to Europe. But weak economies in Europe put Hong Kong into lower position in container traffic.  Chinese and some Asian ports are flourishing in container handling but "Hong Kong" is losing container traffic due to "strategy of main land China"  Hong Kong dropped its world port ranking from fourth to fifth position in 2015.
 SINGAPORE:  10 per cent CONCESSION ON PORT DUES TO ATTRACT SHIPPING LINES: Singapore's success as a world-leading container port is mainly due to transshipment volumes. About 85 per cent of the containers that arrive in Singapore are transshipped to another feeder port from Philippine, Vietnam, Indonesia Bangladesh and India. But Shanghai port mainly serves importers and exporters of China. China is known as factory of the world.

The port of Singapore saw its container throughput contract by in 2015 amid the overall slowdown in the global shipping market, made worse by lower Asia-Europe volumes. Singapore is also hub port of Asian countries. But some of the shipping lines have started direct port to port service (bypassing Singapore) due to lower bunker prices. Further it has compounded by developments such as the rebalancing of volumes across shipping alliances agreements in liner trade.
To arrest the declining trend of container traffic, Singapore has started an additional 10 per cent concession on port dues for containerships calling at the port. The new concession has been started from January 15 of this year. This will be continue till one year.
PORT OF NINGBO: The Ningbo-Zhoushan port is ranked the world's fourth busiest container port in 2015, after its volumes surpassed Hong Kong's 2015 volumes at 20.11m TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit). Over the past five years, investments of over RMB420bn ($64bn) have been made to upgrade and further develop the Chinese port. The Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Qingdao are other two ports of China in top 10 ranking
TAIWAN: KAOHSIUNG ENHANCING CAPACITY FOR MEGA SHIP: Taiwan's main seaport Kaohsiung container volumes were recorded at 10.26m TEU, down 2.8 per cent compared to 10.59m teu registered in 2014, The Taiwanese port is currently in the midst of upgrading works to construct deepwater berths capable of accommodating giant container ships of 22,000 TEU. Upon completion of the upgrading project in 2019, Kaohsiung port would boost its handling capacity by an additional 4.5m teu. At present, Kaohsiung port can cater to containerships of 14,000 TEU. Mega Container ships have been forced to port to enhance its capacity. All above statistic shows that the growth of ports have been shifted from Europe/USA to Asia.
India's 35 per cent container transship through Colombo-Salalah-Singapore and Jebel Ali port. Colombo mainly handles India's transshipment container traffic. Therefore, India has constructed new world class JNPT container port in 1989 to diversify its container traffic from Colombo port.
Accordingly, JNPT handled more traffic than Colombo. But Colombo stopped to JNPT to handle more traffic in 2012 (Equal volume 4.19) Now Colombo generates 71  per cent of the Indian transshipment traffic of its total throughput. .The Colombo port annual throughput for 2014 was 4.9 million TEUs compared to 5.2 million TEUs last year that accounted for a 5.7 per cent increase. It means that Colombo over took to JNPT.
Meanwhile, Container traffic of JNPT port diversified to new Hajira port due to frequent  labour strike and congestion in JNPT port   Hazira is roughly 120 nautical miles north of JNPT.   Privately-operated AHCT offers about 2,150 feet of quay, 14 meters  draft and an annual capacity of 1.0 million TEUs.  It will increase up to 2.2 million TEUs next year. Now, it is difficult to JNPT port to compete with Colombo port. But now India is thinking to bypass Colombo port and use Chittagong port for transshipment for  Asian countries.
CONTAINER TRAFFIC IN MAIN SAARC COUNTRIES: South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is a trading block of eight countries. India-Pakistan-Sri Lanka and Bangaladesh are main maritime nations. But India-Pakistan and Bangaladesh  use Colombo as  its hub port for intra-SAARC trade. Many shipping lines cover these countries before going to Europe or China.

The Chittagong port made a target of attaining 2.0 million TEU container handling by end of 2016, but it has achieved the goal in 2015. Karachi International Container Terminal (KICT) has handled 10 million TEUs since the start of commercial operations in 1998, becoming the first container terminal operator in Pakistan. Now, Pakistan has constructed new container port Gwadar which connects to Jebel Ali in middle East. Interestingly, the total throughput of above 4.0 major ports is not even one port Jebel Ali.
The writer is a Professor in International Maritime College-Oman, having vast experience in port and shipping industry. He has visited Singapore-Hong Kong- Guangzhou (China)-Colombo-Salalah-Manila-Ferrol (Spain)-Jebel Ali, JNPT (India) and Khalifa ports for study purpose. [email protected]