Taiwan-owned ships formed the world's 11th largest merchant fleet in terms of deadweight tonnes last year, down two notches from 2005, according to a report released on Friday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
The Review of Maritime Transport 2007 shows that Taiwan's fleet consisted of 574 merchant vessels totaling 24.858 million deadweight tonnes last year, up approximately 470,000 tonnes compared with 2005.
The tonnage accounted for 2.54 percent of the world's total, down 0.15 percentage points from 2005.
TOP 10 FLEETS
Last year the 10 countries and territories with the largest merchant fleets were Greece, Japan, Germany, China, Norway, the US, Hong Kong, South Korea, the UK and Singapore, in that order.
The report also indicated that Taiwan ranked fifth in the world in terms of container port traffic last year.
The country's ports handled a total of 13.1 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs) for the year, up 2.43 percent over the year-earlier figure.
KAOHSIUNG PORT
Kaohsiung port ranked in the report as the world's sixth largest container terminal in terms of container through-put.
The volume of containers handled by the port last year rose 3.21 percent to 9.77 million TEUs.
The report said the top five container terminals in the world last year were Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Busan, in that order.
The report shows that the container throughput of a number of Chinese ports recorded rapid growth last year, including Shanghai's at 20.05 percent and Shenzhen's at 14.03 percent.
The container throughput of Qingdao, Ningbo and Guangzhou soared 22.12 percent, 35.71 percent and 40.88 percent respectively, with their world rankings advancing from 13th, 15th and 18th in 2005 to 11th, 13th, and 15th last year, according to the report.
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