Competitors force government to back transshipment as manufacturing drifts across the strait to mainland centres
Taiwan's Kaohsiung port is gearing up for an expansion project costing NT$90 billion (HK$21.12 billion) as it attempts to counter faster-growing regional competitors.
The project is also aimed at supporting a transshipment industry that Taiwan hopes will help make up for shipping business lost as a result of its manufacturing industries' migration to the mainland.
'The government will shoulder half of the investment,' Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau director-general Huang Ching-tern said yesterday.
The expansion plans call for five container berths capable of accommodating 15,000-teu (20-foot equivalent units) vessels to be completed by 2008, increasing Kaohsiung's handling capacity by 2.5 million teu. Last year, port throughput grew 4.1 per cent to 8.84 million teu.
By comparison, port throughput at Shanghai jumped 32 per cent last year to 11.37 million teu. In Hong Kong, the world's busiest port city, throughput grew by about 7 per cent to 20.45 million teu.