The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs(MLTM) has announced that the container throughput over the whole domestic ports in September is expected to record 1.868 million TEUs, up 6.2% from the same month of previous year's 1.759 million TEUs.

It is a rally after August's traffic switched to a decline for the first time in 34 months, however, global economic recession still makes it hard to feel optimistic about further progress. Actually such an increasing trend is estimated to have been reflected by early shipment of China-bound cargoes due to 8 days' long weekend in China.

Export/import container traffic, which affected by China's economic contraction and the stagnation in the domestic economy, is expected to reach 1.145 million TEUs, slightly up 4.8% from last year.

Transshipment containers tentatively total 0.699 million TEUs, up 10% influenced by temporary increase in transshipment cargoes in North China.

The port of Busan will probably exceed 1.43 million TEUs, up 8.4% while their transshipment container traffic is expected to be over 0.67 million TEUs, which even though will be swayed by complex set of factors like global economic slow down and traffic fall in northern Chinese ports.

"Traffic increase in September is interpreted to be temporary due to China's domestic conditions and it is hard to count on increasing trend of the past." said a staff of MLTM.