Davao City (29 September) -- Domestic cargoes traded at the various port facilities in Davao Gulf rose in the face of crashing foreign trade that began in the closing months last year.

Latest figures reveal that bananas which were hard hit when the financial fallouts happened have been briskly shipped to national capital region driving up the total domestic trade by 23%.

Apparently, other banana growers who sensed the waning and retreated demand of the commodity shifted its shipments to Manila to recover lost earnings from vanishing demands abroad.

However, the influx of construction materials specifically that of iron/steel and cement products also jacked up the local trading given the full blast construction of new malls at Bajada and at Panacan to the extent that metal products emerged the No. 1 discharged domestic commodity here these past months.

These two factors would hopefully raise some more the domestic volumes this year and effectively buttressed the total cargo throughput of the port of Davao when the year ends.

For the first six months this year, domestic shipments of bananas leaped by 275% when compared with the same period last year. On the other hand, exports of these plunged by 12%. These statistical variations are prevalent at present at Sasa Wharf.

Yet despite the figures, bananas still is strongly ensconced as our top export.

Big name banana companies that shipped its produce through their own port facilities do not seem affected'though by the slowing market demands as private ports here are still "on level" with their export volumes with that of last year.

Since bananas are generally handled in containers, this translated to an overall growth of 7% thanks largely to the increment in domestic vans of 25% which greatly propped up the zero growth in foreign vans handled.

Container traffic has largely been the backbone of port development at Sasa Wharf given the established trend of containerized cargo handling.

Consider this: When containers were first brought to Sasa in 1978 as alternative type of cargo handling and a year after PPA administration of the port, there were 16,594 units of various container sizes handled or, in port parlance, 13,288 TEUs or twenty equivalent units. These grew to 27,700 units or 22,225 TEUs two years later in 1980.

Today, port of Davao has primed itself as among the top ports in the Philippines and with 8 regular domestic shipping and 7 foreign lines here not counting the tramping vessels, container traffic is at its all-time high of 349,023 TEUs as of December 2008.

By June this year, the figure stood at 167,406 TEUs.

This is further expected to grow as foreign trade would perk up as have been observed every last quarter of the year owing to the holiday season.

This presumption is further strengthened with the most recent foray of a new ship player opening portage services between the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. This new route followed the recently established linkage between Koror in Palau and this city pioneered by Marianas Lines.

CB Ships Services Corporation, while deploying smaller container vessels would not only open trade between Davao and ports of Lae and Madang in Papua New Guinea but would hope to position Sasa Wharf as a transshipment point for China, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the Mediterranean and Europe in consideration of the fact that port tariff is lesser here than in Singapore where most cargoes are relayed from Asia to the world.

With an already established home office in Metro Manila and branches at Cagayan de Oro and Lae, Papua New Guinea, the opening of its satellite office here would once again "open up Davao to the world" in the footsteps of the once-ballyhooed Gearbulk experience where Sasa Wharf became the transshipment point or relay centre of cargoes from ASEAN to Europe and the Americas in early 80's. These trade, reliant on wood products from Philippine neighbors, would cease when most of these countries imposed bans and restrictions regarding the harvest of its forest resources.