SEOUL, April 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's container freight volume at seaports rose in the first quarter, indicating a recovery in global trade from the economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a government report said on Thursday.
The volume of container cargo processed at local seaports stood at 7.29 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs) in the January-March quarter, up 1.3 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
It showed signs of recovering global trade from the pandemic-hit economic downturn.
The container freight processed for export and import reached 4.24 million TEUs in the first quarter, up 4.5 percent from the same quarter of last year.
The figure for trade with China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, advanced 16.5 percent in the quarter, making the biggest contribution to the growth in container traffic volume.
The container traffic volume for transshipment at domestic seaports declined 2.8 percent year-on-year to 3 million TEUs in the first quarter.
Meanwhile, the non-container freight volume at local seaports reached 255.61 million tons in the first quarter, down 3.1 percent from a year earlier. Enditem
