Busiest port : Shanghai overtakes Singapore

Shanghai says it overtook Singapore for the first time in 2010 to become the world’s busiest container port.

SHANGHAI: Shanghai said it overtook Singapore for the first time in 2010 to become the world’s busiest container port, as the global economic recovery boosted cargo traffic through China’s business centre.

Shanghai’s port handled 29.05 million 20-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, in 2010 – 500,000 TEUs more than Singapore, the Shanghai government said in a statement.

Officials credited the economic recovery and Shanghai’s six-month-long World Expo with boosting the container and cargo traffic travelling through the port, the statement said.

Shanghai’s cargo throughput rose to about 650 million tons in 2010, remaining the world’s largest, up from 590 million tons in 2009, the statement said. Shanghai will continue, and possibly expand, an export tax refund pilot project and press on with expanding infrastructure, the statement said. The city has charged ahead through the financial crisis with work to more than double its port capacity.

China’s cabinet has declared it wants Shanghai to move up the value chain and become a full-service world-class shipping centre by 2020, with shipping financing, reinsurance and arbitration services.

The expansion includes the Yangshan Deepwater Port, which connects to the mainland via a 32.5-kilometre bridge and the world’s biggest shipbuilding yard on its northern Changxing island.

Published in The Express Tribune January 9^th, 2011.