Hong Kong port recorded a 16% overall throughput drop in February to 1.2m teu from 1.4m teu in previous corresponding period, accelerating from the 9.6% drop seen in the first month of the year.
The container turnover at port since the beginning of 2016 decrease by 12.5% yoy and amounted to 2.86 million TEU.
The negative container throughput into the port happened on the background of Chinese economy delay and bad economic environment in the region.
Throughput at the main Kwai Tsing terminals was especially hard hit during the holiday-shortened and traditionally slow month, falling 17.6% to just 973,000 teu, the first time volume has dropped below 1m teu in more than two years.
Throughput at the non-Kwai Tsing terminals also fell by 8.9% to 240,000 teu.
At the end of 2015 the port of Hong Kong container throughput amounted to 20.11 million TEU, including the container turnover of Kwai Tsing, which amounted to 15.57 million TEU.
According to a report in Bloomberg, Hong Kong’s declining port heralds a grim future. A little more than a decade ago, Hong Kong was the world’s busiest port.
Last week, the local government reported that cargo flowing through Hong Kong dropped by 13.8 percent in 2015, capping a dismal year in which the city’s port declined to the world’s fifth-busiest, dropping behind one-time also-rans Shanghai and Shenzhen.
It’s likely to get worse: Last year, Deutsche Bank predicted that the volume of cargo moving through Hong Kong will decline by as much as 50 percent over the next decade.