LISBON, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- Portugal's mainland ports handled 86.9 million tons of cargo in 2019, down by 6.2 percent from the previous year, according to data released by the Authority for Mobility and Transport (AMT) on Friday.
The AMT attributed the decline to multiple factors, including cargo decrease in the port of Sines, shrinking coal and crude oil imports, less containerized cargo volume and drop in transshipment operations, according to Lusa News Agency.
The drop in the "transshipment" is a consequence of "labor disturbances at Terminal XXI (Port of Sines) from May to August and the occurrence in April of a hydrocarbon spill during the refueling of a ship in the area of the same terminal," the AMT said in a statement.
The segments with the most negative impact to the performance of the port system are containerized cargo, coal and crude oil, which together accounted for 85.7 percent of the total 9.6 million tons of lost cargo, the AMT explained.
With regard to containers, the mainland ports recorded a volume of 2.7 million TEU last year (measure applied to containers), down by 8.9 percent year-on-year. Enditem
