(Business in Cameroon) - The volume of goods handled at the Port of Douala dropped 2.1% year-on-year to 12.4 million tons in 2022, a document from the Port Authority (PAD) showed.

The underperformance is attributed to a decline in the traffic of bulk commodities, particularly clinker (-13%), wheat (-4%), petroleum coke (-34%), and barley malt (-69%). PAD said it has registered 3.66 million tons of goods in this category, compared to 4.38 million tons in 2021. Containerized traffic also declined from 3.85 million tons to 3.26 million tons over the period, down 15%. The reason behind this reality, PAD said, is the sluggishness of international maritime trade, marked by "higher inflation, COVID-19 outbreaks in China, and the war in Ukraine”. These factors disrupted supply chains on an international scale, thus reducing traffic volume on the Cameroonian coast.

Despite this counter-performance, the number of stopovers for all types of shipping overall rose by 6% to almost 2,000 in 2022. An upward trend linked to a combined increase in long-haul stopovers, up from 978 in 2021 to 985 in 2022, and local navigation stopovers, up from 909 in 2021 to 1,014 in 2022.

These stats were presented during the PAD Board sessions held from May 29 to June 1, 2023. For 2022, the PAD approved a net profit of CFA16 billion, including the performance of the Container Terminal Authority (RTC) and the Towing Authority (RDR).