Port of Lomé Jumps Two Spots, to 94th Position in Lloyd’s Top 100 Busiest Ports Index

Logistics

Thursday, 28 September 2023 16:20

Port of Lomé Jumps Two Spots, to 94th Position in Lloyd’s Top 100 Busiest Ports Index

(Togo First) - The port of Lomé (PAL) has, again, been ranked in Lloyd’s Top 100 World’s Busiest Ports List, in terms of container traffic. The port ranked 94th, against 96th in 2022. It is the third consecutive year the port has been featured in the index.

Container traffic at the PAL stood at 1.8 million TEUs in 2022, down from 1.9 million TEUs (-6.5%) in 2021. Despite the drop, the infrastructure gained two places on Lloyd’s list.

"There has been a significant drop in traffic for calendar year 2022, but the port of Lomé still holds on to its crown as West African leader. Throughput has fallen back to 1.8 million TEUs from almost 2 million TEUs the previous year. But unfortunately, the other ports evaluated in this ranking led Lomé to climb to a new high of 94th," the ranking's authors noted.

The Togolese port was the only West African port featured in the top 100. Besides the PAL, only three other African ports were featured, namely Morocco’s Tanger Med port, Egypt’s Said port, and South Africa’s Durban port. They respectively ranked 24th (in the world and first in Africa), 48th (2nd in Africa), and 79th (3rd in Africa). The PAL was 94th worldwide, 4th in Africa, and 1st in West Africa.

The several reforms undertaken by the Togolese government, notably to improve costs and streamline procedures in the port area, could explain how the PAL remained in the index, which is otherwise dominated by Chinese ports.

Another factor for the PAL’s performance could be the acquisition of modern handling equipment. For example, the Lomé Container Terminal (LCT) recently acquired two mobile cranes and 10 container trucks to increase its capacity. “The LCT has progressively increased its capacity and continued to equip its terminal to handle the largest ships transiting the region, thus setting itself apart from its regional competitors who have had difficulty keeping pace with the Port of Lomé's development and handling capacities,” authors of LLoyd’s index indicated.

Esaïe Edoh

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