Hong Kong Air Cargo Growth Fuels Recovery Hopes

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

12 April 2002

Hong Kong's Airport Authority announced that air-cargo traffic through Chek Lap Kok airport rose 18% year on year in March to 126,000 tonnes, the fourth consecutive month of overall air-cargo growth, suggesting that the SAR's economy may finally be responding to improvements in the global economic picture. Passenger numbers, however, showed only a marginal increase from the same month last year.

Exports again led the charge for air cargo, according to the Airport Authority, with Japan, Taiwan and Europe being the dominant export growth markets. But more significant for domestic economic analysts was the apparent rebound of import cargo, which grew 6.4% year on year to 87,000 tonnes, more than double the rate in January and February.

The import growth is taken as a positive sign, but the Authority had no specific data to indicate how much of the intake was destined for local consumers as opposed to goods in transit to the mainland. On average, about 70 per cent of throughput is linked to the Pearl River Delta.

"Air-cargo imports are one of the early figures economists use to detect trends, but we will have to wait for supporting import and export data to be confident of any recovery," Airport Authority spokeswoman Wong Sau-ying said. "It would normally take about three months of growth of this kind supported by other data to bear that out."

A European forwarder told the South China Morning Post it was still too early to start counting on an import-volume related bonus in his year-end pay cheque. He said: "It is great to see things moving again but I am still a bit wary about the import side of things. I am not 100 per cent sure that Hong Kong is on the verge of recovering to the levels of 2000 [the record season]. But there is definitely renewed confidence in our industry."

Overall throughput at the airport for the month hit 213,000 tonnes, up 13% year on year. First-quarter tonnage eclipsed the 530,000-tonne mark, about 11% higher than last year.

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