PANAMA REMAINS TOP LATIN AMERICA CONTAINER PORT

PANAMA REMAINS TOP LATIN AMERICA CONTAINER PORT    The port of Colon (Cristobal) at the Atlantic end of the Panama canal has remained the busiest port in the Latin American and Caribbean region in 2001, according to statistics compiled by United Nations Economic Commission for the Caribbean and Latin America.
   The Panamanian port handles 1.21 million TEUs last year, down from 1.35 million TEUs in 2000. The port includes the Manzanillo International Terminal, the Coco Solo terminal operated by Evergreen, and the port of Cristobal’s common-user facilities.
   The port of Colon “lost some business to Hutchisons’s Balboa terminal (358,868 TEUs) in its first full year of operation, on the Pacific side of the country,” said Jan Hoffmann, economic affairs adviser at the U.N. agency.
   Preliminary figures of the Economic Commission for the Caribbean and Latin America show that the Brazilian port of Santos may have become the second largest container port in the region again, overtaking the port of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
   Santos handled 1.03 million TEUs in 2001, up from 988,000 TEUs in 2000. Buenos Aires saw its box throughput fall to an estimated 1.01 million TEUs, from 1.13 million TEUs in 2000.
   Behind Colon, Santos and Buenos Aires, the fourth and fifth busiest container ports in Latin American and the Caribbean last year were Kingston, in Jamaica, and Puerto Limon, in Costa Rica.
   The Economic Commission for the Caribbean and Latin America said that Kingston handled an estimated 950,000 TEUs last year, up from 894,779 TEUs in 2000. Puerto Limon had a traffic volume of 575,178 TEUs, up from 571,957 TEUs. The Economic Commission for the Caribbean and Latin America port ranking excludes the large-scale container ports of Puerto Rico.
   Like ports in other regions, ports in Latin America and the Caribbean witnessed a slower port traffic growth in 2001 than in earlier years, with some reporting net decreases in box throughputs.