The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority said Wednesday it expects its two container terminals to handle 120,000 twenty-foot equivalent units this year.
“This year we aspire to hit a target volume of 120,000 TEUs, or 20 percent of the 600,000-TEU combined annual capacity of the port’s new container terminals 1 and 2, in line with our vision to make this Freeport the premier logistics hub north of Metro Manila,” SBMA chairman and administrator Roberto Garcia said in a statement.
He said the Port of Subic sustained its growth momentum from 2012 until the first quarter of 2015.
Port revenue increased 20 percent, GRT by 12 percent, non-containerized cargo by 15 percent, containerized cargo by 28 percent, and ship calls by 18 percent.
Garcia said the entry of more domestic and foreign vessels that called regularly on Subic had improved the port’s connectivity to the world.
“We now have NYK Line, SITC, Maersk Line, APL and Wan Hai vessels plying to and from major Asian ports like Kaohsiung, Tanjung, Singapore, Busan, Xiamen, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh, Shnaghai, and Surabaya, among other; as well as to and from Japanese ports of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Chiba and Kobe,” Garcia said.
He said the Subic Port successfully managed to accommodate the sudden surge in container shipments at the height of the Manila congestion, proving its preparedness to handle volume shipments.
Garcia said in the past three years, the Port of Subic continued to register positively in terms of revenues, GRT, number of ship calls, and non-containerized and containerized cargos.
Annual port revenue increased from P371 million in 2011 to P908 million in 2014, he said.
Ship calls also increased by 15 percent to 2,591 in 2014 from 1,803 in 2011 while GRT grew 186 percent to 40 million tons over the three-year period.
“Our port also enjoyed similar growth in terms of containerized cargo, which grew from 27,671 TEUs in 2011 to 77,177 TEUs in 2014, reflecting 60 percent growth. Non-containerized cargo volume also went up by 136 percent to 6.1 million over the three-year period until 2014,” Garcia said.
