Despite an escalating US-China trade dispute, Taiwan’s international seaports did not see a large rise in transshipment cargo containers in the first quarter this year, Taiwan International Port Corp (TIPC) statistics showed.
The trade issue has motivated Taiwanese companies to move production capacity from China back to Taiwan, with the Ministry of Economic Affairs last week estimating returning investment would reach NT$600 billion (US$19.08 billion), mostly in the electronics and information technology industries.
However, TIPC data showed that the nation’s seaports handled a combined 5,000,966 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU) from January to last month, a 0.55 percent increase from the same period last year.
The Port of Kaohsiung saw a rise of 0.88 percent to 3.4 million TEU, while the Port of Taichung and Port of Taipei increased 2.29 percent and 0.62 percent to 558,939 TEU and 552,950 TEU respectively compared with the same period last year, TIPC said.
The Port of Keelung saw a 4.03 percent drop to 444,857 TEU, the data showed.
TIPC senior director of port business Chen Jong-long (陳中龍) attributed the growth to an increase in transshipment cargo containers, with 90 percent of them handled at the Port of Kaohsiung.
“The relatively smaller increase at the Port of Taipei and the decline at the Port of Keelung are linked to a mild decrease in imports and exports,” Chen said.
“Many businesses have brought forward shipments since the trade dispute began last year, so there was a boom in the fourth quarter of last year in transshipment and export/import containers, because the cargo that would have been shipped in the first quarter this year was delivered then,” Chen said.
With the dispute escalating, many businesses have begun to move their supply chains out of China, he said.
They might not use Taiwan’s ports, depending on the nature of the business, he said.
“The Port of Kaohsiung remains an ideal seaport for transshipment cargo. Businesses are likely to ship goods from Southeast Asia, China or other East Asian nations via Taiwan,” he said. “Therefore, we estimate that transshipment cargo containers will not be affected much.”
Whether the US-China trade dispute would contribute an increase in transshipment or export/import cargo remains to be seen, he said.
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