This week’s chart relates to an article in Friday’s Jamaica-Gleaner.com. The Jamaican government is seeking to divest the Kingston Container Terminal (KCT). The KCT according to the article:
“is one of the region’s leading container transshipment ports… with a capacity of 2.8 million TEU’s or twenty-foot equivalent container units.”
The graph shows the TONNAGE of goods being transshiped through KCT from January 2011 to October 2012. Note that this graph is NOT showing the TEUs being transshiped.
The chart also reveals an interesting coincidence between the date of the signing of an agreement with French company CMA CGM, and the dramatic drop-off in transshipment cargo tonnage. However, diGJamaica has no insight as to the correlation between the two events, as CMA CGM is a container shipper and is thus concerned with the number of TEUs shipped, not weight or tonnage.
As the article states:
“In August 2011, French shipping group CMA CGM signed an agreement with the Jamaican Government, which will see the company investing US$100 million to improve infrastructure and equipment, as well as employ 1,000 persons in exchange for a 35-year lease to set up a major hub at the KCT”.
Click on the image above for a motion chart showing the same information and stay tuned to the diGJamaica’s Trade Dashboard to see monthly updates.
