WASHINGTON: In the first four months of 2017, Latvian ports reloaded 24.528 mln tons of cargo, which was a 10.5% rise against the same period in 2016, according to information released by the Transport Ministry writes LETA. Bulk cargos, which dominated in Latvian ports in January-April this year, grew 27.4% y-o-y to 13.382 mln tons. Handling of coal increased by 43.7% to 7.812 mln tons, chemical cargos fell 3.4% to 1.057 mln tons, and woodchip cargos rose 34.2% to 642,000 tons. Reloading of liquid cargos fell 9.6% y-o-y to 7.518 mln tons in the first four months of 2017, with oil products making up the largest amount, or 7.247 mln tons, which was a 9.5 % drop from the first four months in 2016, and crude oil handling declined 37.9 times to 12,800 tons. The turnover of general cargos grew 7.2% y-o-y to 3.629 mln tons in January-April 2017. These cargos included 1.504 mln tons of container cargo, up 16%, 997,500 tons of timber, down 6.4%, and 973,100 tons of roll on/roll off cargo, up 9.1%.
Riga was the leading Latvian port by cargo turnover in the first four months of this year, having reloaded 12.225 mln tons of cargo, which was by 0.3% less than in the first four months of 2016. The port of Ventspils followed with 9.445 mln tons of cargo reloaded in January-April 2017, up 25.1% y-o-y, and the port of Liepaja was third with 2.285 mln tons of cargo, up 20.8% from January-April 2016. Among Latvia’s small ports, Skulte led with 289,900 tons of cargo reloaded in the four months of 2017, up 29.5 % y-o-y. Mersrags followed with 155,700 tons of cargo, down 5.8%, and Salacgriva came third with 101,800 tons, up 15.9 %. All Latvia’s small ports together reloaded 572,700 tons of cargo in the four months of 2017, which was 15% more than a year ago.
