Coasting along

摘要

The provision of reliable coastal shipping services is considered vital in linking up isolated communities of the Mercosur region, and in helping forge trading relationships with the rest of the world. This is especially true in Chile and Argentina, where cabotage services offer a lifeline to cities such as Punta Arenas and Ushuaia. But it is in Brazil where the coastal and cabotage trade is most developed, with volumes having registered rapid growth since the late 1990s. Indeed, total traffic has increased from an estimated 20,000TEU in 1999 to a projected 390,000TEU for calendar year 2005. Today, regular links are provided to/from regions, such as Amazonas and Manaus to the main gateway ports of north-east and south-east Brazil. Such shipping services have helped take some traffic off Brazil's heavily congested highways, which are also notorious for their poor state of repair and their high accident ratios. Arguably, ocean carriers have also contributed to opening up the various regions to international trade, with Manaus in particular home to considerable levels of foreign investment, manufacturing/assembly and distribution activity.