THE Port of Beirut's revenue declined by 4.79 per cent to US$158.84 million year on year largely because of a 29.49 per cent fall in automobile demand, attributed to the Arab Spring unrest that depressed consumer confidence in the first 10 months of 2011.

Without transshipment to buoy results, container movement would have dropped 2.3 per cent in spite of import and export volumes increasing 3.22 per cent to 6.68 million tons in 2011.

But container volumes soared in 2011 to over one million TEU led by transshipment volume shifting from ports of neighbouring countries. Transshipments surged to 449,029 TEU from 349,668 TEU in 2010. Also a total container throughput of 1.03 million, an increase of 8.97 per cent year on year, according to a report in the Beirut Daily Star.