Registered increase in liquid bulk (+6.2%) and general cargo (+1.3%)
Total port traffic exceeded 45.8 million tons in January
- A fall in coal traffic (-24%) drags solid bulk down by 22.4%.
- No change in traffic to/from China.
03-06-2020 (Ministry of Transportation, Mobility and Urban Agenda). Spain's 46 general interest ports, owned by the State and managed by 28 Port Authorities under Puertos del Estado's coordination, handled 45,875,308 tons during January 2020, representing a 2.2% fall with respect to the same month the previous year. Despite positive performance in liquid stock traffic (+6.2%) and general cargo (+1.3%), a fall in solid bulk traffic (-22.4%), largely representing energy products such as coal (-24%), iron mineral (-65%), and other minerals (-22%), making up more than half of all solid bulk, has decisively influenced the final numbers.
A fall in solid bulk traffic, which already became noticeable during the last few months of 2019, is the logical consequence of measures to fight climate change launched by most countries in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels entailing an emission of greenhouse gas.
In turn, in relation to how the coronavirus epidemic has affected port traffic, it is still too soon to evaluate its impact. In fact, traffic levels between Spain and China increased 2.2% during the month of January 2020, from 1.6 million tons in 2019 to the present 1.7 million.
Finally, total traffic for both regular and cruiseship passengers has increased by 3.8% until exceeding 2 million persons. Nevertheless, of interest is the fact that cruise traveler traffic, already affected by expected seasonality, has fallen by 3.2%, except for the Canary Islands as a whole, where it increased by almost 1%. Total cruise passengers reached 565,428 travelers.
More information available at
http://www.puertos.es/es-es/estadisticas/Paginas/estadistica_mensual.aspx
