For the second consecutive year, the port of Abidjan stood out with exceptional commercial results. Indeed, after an overall traffic of 24,177,267 recorded in 2018, the volume of goods processed (import and export) in 2019 reached a record level of 25,738,345 tonnes, leading to an increase of 6.5% compared to 2018. This is the very first time, since 1950, the year it came into operation, that such a level of traffic has been reached by the port of Abidjan, thus confirming the renewed dynamism and the effective impact of the major reforms initiated by the General Directorate of the Autonomous Port of Abidjan, from 2011.
This growth is mainly driven by national goods which represent 89.8% of the overall volume. In 2019, this traffic saw an added value of 1,142,529 tonnes, or +5.2% compared to 2018.
This national traffic is made up of three main categories: general goods with 14,817,471 tonnes, an increase of 2.9% compared to 2018, petroleum products with 7,645,456 tonnes, an increase of 10.4%. and fishing products with 642,449 tonnes, an increase of 1.6%. This progression in all segments indicates a booming national economy.
The other component of the activities of the port of Abidjan which also experienced an improvement in 2019, is transit. Indeed, we note a total volume of 2,037,799 tonnes, a strong increase of 24.1%, with a remarkable recovery in Malian traffic which recorded an increase of 47.1% for 790,176 tonnes of goods. Burkina Faso also achieved growth of 14.1% with traffic of 1,244,682 tonnes.
Container traffic is not left out of this almost general upward trend. With 730,827 boxes processed in 2019 compared to 674,624 the previous year, the growth rate is 8.3%.
In terms of ship traffic, we observe a virtual stagnation in the number of calls with a very slight growth of 0.9%. The shipowners’ strategy of chartering larger ships in order to achieve economies of scale could be one of the explanations for this slowdown.