Cargo Trade Value Declines at Port Everglades, Rises at Port Miami
Cargo trade through Port Everglades, as measured in dollars, declined in 2015 while increasing at PortMiami, according to trade analysis company WorldCity.
Recent reports on the company's website, ustradenumbers.com, state that the combined value of imports and exports through Port Everglades fell 7.21%, from $27.15 billion to $25.22 billion, between calendar years 2014 and 2015.
Trade value through PortMiami, meanwhile, increased from $23.97 billion to $25.27 billion over the same period, according to the site, which bases its information on economic statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Ken Roberts, president of WorldCity, said much of the decline at Port Everglades can be traced to falling oil and petroleum prices. The value of gasoline and other fuels imported through Port Everglades fell 33.9% to $2.27 billion.
Still, port officials said the volume of petroleum and jet-fuel imports increased and is continuing to rise.
Imports from Venezuela, a major source of oil and petroleum, dropped in value 51.9% to $601.96 million, WorldCity reported.
Exports to Venezuela from Port Everglades declined 34.01% to $1.73 billion. "On the export side, everyone is suffering who sends anything to Venezuela" because of that country's political and economic troubles, Roberts said.
Another major factor for the decline at Port Everglades: Medical instruments that formerly entered Port Everglades from Costa Rica now enter PortMiami due to a consolidation of routes by major shipping companies, said Glenn Wiltshire, deputy director at Port Everglades.
That pushed Costa Rica off the list of Port Everglades' top five trading partners. Imports of medical instruments overall fell 38.7% to $478.5 million at Port Everglades while increasing at PortMiami 169.2% to $679.99 million, the reports said.
The same shipping changes that shifted Costa Rican exports to PortMiami also sent more goods from the Dominican Republic to Port Everglades, Wiltshire said, but it wasn't enough to make up for the loss from Costa Rica.
The boost in overall trade propelled the Dominican Republic to become Port Everglades' top trade partner in 2015, replacing Venezuela, which was No. 1 in 2014. Trade with the Caribbean nation rose 36.04% to $2.51 billion.
Roberts expects 2016 to be largely flat at Port Everglades, with the economies of Venezuela and Brazil remaining shaky, Columbia remaining flat and Argentina showing improvement. "I don't expect 2016 to be a banner year, but I don't expect it to be a terrible year either," he said.
From Port Everglades' perspective, fiscal 2015, which ended Sept. 30, was another year of growth. Port Everglades measures its business by a count of shipping containers — measured as 20-foot-equivalent units, or TEUs. Because port revenue is tied to containers, the value of goods inside the containers is irrelevant to the port.
Volume at the port increased from 1.01 million to 1.06 million TEUs between fiscal 2014 and 2015, but dropped 1.3% in the first three months of the 2016 fiscal year (October through December), from 262,838 to 259,356 TEUs.
Jim Pyburn, director of business development at the port, said he doesn't expect the decline to continue through the year. "The big picture we're seeing is that [fiscal] 2016 will be flat," he said.
