Umm Qasr Port in southern Iraq. Photo: AFP
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The Iraqi Ministry of Transport has announced that the country’s ports can now handle twice as much cargo as they could in the past.
The ministry’s media director, Hussein Ahmed, said on Sunday that the current capacity of Iraqi ports exceeds 79 million tons of cargo and more than 3.6 million containers.
Ahmed noted that Iraqi ports can now handle twice the cargo volume previously recorded, which was over 40 million tons, as reported by the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA).
The Iraqi official mentioned that improvements have been made to the ports, including the construction of new roads, upgrades to existing streets leading to the ports, and the establishment of marshaling yards to alleviate internal congestion.
Iraq’s State Company for Maritime Transport (SCMT), a government-owned maritime company operating under the Iraqi Ministry of Transport, announced on Sunday the reactivation of the Iraqi Line, marked by the arrival of the vessel Basra at the port of Umm Qasr.
SCMT’s director Ahmed Jassim said that the vessel arrived at the port of Umm Qasr carrying containers from the port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates, signaling the reactivation of the maritime route and the resumption of its commercial voyages after a hiatus that lasted for decades.