Annual container handling at the country's premier sea port of Chattogram decreased 2.54 per cent year-on-year in the just concluded calendar year of 2022 owing to a downward trend in foreign trade. 

Port officials and users reasoned it was for the Russia-Ukraine war at the beginning of the year and the slowdown in imports since the middle of the year.

According to data from the traffic department of Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), the port handled 31,33,020 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers in 2022.

The CPA prepared the data calculating the number of import, export and empty containers loaded and unloaded at the port's main jetties, Pangaon Inland Container Terminal in Keraniganj and Kamalapur Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Dhaka.

CPA Secretary Md Omar Faruk said the decrease was an impact of the Russia-Ukraine crisis as well as restrictions on the import of luxury goods.

However, in terms of handling all types of cargo and ships, the port has managed to maintain positive growths.

According to data from the traffic department of Chittagong Port Authority, the port handled 31,33,020 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers in 2022

Around 11.93 crore tonnes of goods of all types, including containerised cargoes, were transported through the port in 2022, a year-on-year growth of 2.28 per cent.

On the other hand, a total of 4,344 ships arrived at the port in 2022, a 3.20 per cent increase from that in 2021.

Around 98 per cent of loaded and empty containers are transported through the Chattogram port while the rest through the Mongla port.

Almost all goods meant for export are solely transported in containers while import of raw materials for most of the industries, excepting cement and ceramic factories, are done in containers.

Annual container handling by the port crossed 3 million TEUs for the first time in 2019. In that year the port handled 30,88,187 TEUs containers, securing an annual growth of 6.34 per cent.

Due to the impact of the pandemic, the country's foreign trade plummeted in 2020, resulting in a sharp fall in the port's annual container handling by 8.04 per cent to only 28,39,977 TEUs that year.

Such a decline in container throughput in 2020 caused the Chattogram port's ramking to go down by nine places to 67th in the global ranking of Lloyd's List One Hundred Container Ports.

Following the handling of a record number of containers or 32,14,448 TEUs in 2021, the port bounced back in the global ranking in the following year and advanced three places to 64th position.

The port users assume that the declined in container throughput in 2022 may have a negative impact for the port in global ranking.

CPA Secretary Faruk, however, said it was still difficult to presume such negative impacts in the ranking because the economic slowdown happened across the globe and might have reduced container transport in other busy ports as well.