• DELAY: At least a dozen of cargo ships are sitting anchored off Mexico’s Pacific Coast waiting for dock space to open up at the port of Manzanillo, according to Mural newspaper. Sources say that one of the causes of the delay is a new, inexperienced port administration led by the Mexican Navy.
• SEAPORT: Manzanillo is Mexico’s largest seaport handling more than 40 percent of the country’s total container cargo. In a controversial decision, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered that the Navy will take control of Mexican seaports from civilian administrators.
• DISASTER: “The port authority administration has a disaster…It’s very serious because all ships have an itinerary and a route with hours that they have to comply with. The fact they are waiting for docking positions costs”, a logistics company official told Mural newspaper, asking not to be named.
• STATISTICS: The volume of container cargo at the port of Manzanillo fell 5.2 percent in 2020 due to the decline in global trade linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Mexican government data, Manzanillo handled 2.90 million TEUs in 2020 compared to 3.06 TEUs in 2021.
