A view from Hamad Port (Photo: Mwani)
Qatar’s maritime sector is set to finish this year on a positive note as ports have posted strong performance in nine months.
The container traffic at Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port crossed 1.2 million mark during January- November this year.
Total 3,758 vessels docked at these ports during the first 11 months of this year. November was a busy month for the ports due to increased cargo traffic.
The ports handled 116,733 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) containers last month, according to (Mwani Qatar).
The ports handled 63,413 tonnes of general cargo; 8,467 units of vehicles and 62,260 livestock in November this year.
The container traffic expected to rise further in future as Hamad Port is undergoing expansion.
The development works of Phase II of the Hamad Port, which consist of second container terminal (CT-2), has already begun.
As part of the development of CT-2, QTerminals announced this month that it had placed an order for 24 Terminal Trailers with engineering company Gaussin and for four Empty Container Handlers with heavy equipment manufacturing company SANY.
In September this year, 371 ships docked at Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port compared to 319 ships in August 2019.
The strong performance by maritime sector follows all round performance shown by the ports in the first half of this year.
The ports had handled 218,330 tonnes of building materials in January-June period of this year, compared to 177,000 tonnes in the same period last year, showing a growth of around 24 percent.
The ports had received around 661,331 containers in the first half of 2019, which is around 2.5 percent more than the same period in the same period of last year, according to Mwani Qatar.
