Cape Verdean ports handled 133,525 passengers in inter-island maritime transport in December, an increase of 26.7% compared to the same month in 2021, according to official data consulted by Lusa.
According to the monthly traffic report by Enapor, the public company responsible for managing the archipelago’s nine ports, the December registration also represents 9.7% more compared to the previous month and is close to the historical record of 181,420 passengers in August, maintaining the recovery from the sharp declines since 2020, when inter-island passenger travel was conditioned by measures to contain the covid-19 pandemic.
The previous historic maximum in inter-island maritime transport was recorded precisely in August 2021, with a global movement of 168,901 passengers.
Last December, the movement of passengers in Porto Grande represented 34.1% of the total and in Porto Novo 30.1%, respectively on the neighboring islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão.
The port of Praia, the country’s capital, registered a share of 14.8% of the total, with a movement that increased to 19,851 passengers, indicates the Enapor report, which Lusa had access to.
CV Interilhas, led (51%) by the Portuguese company Transinsular, from the ETE group, has held since August 2019 the concession of the public maritime transport service for passengers and cargo, for 20 years, and concentrates these operations – which since last March also involve a local private maritime operator with regular connections between Santo Antão and São Vicente – having previously admitted that the pandemic represented a 30% drop in activity in 2020.
Only CV Interilhas transported about 1.5 million passengers in three years of operations in the archipelago, according to data released in August to Lusa by the company.
Overall, the ports of Cape Verde handled 699 ship calls in December, 18.3% more than in the same month of 2021, while the movement of goods, in year-on-year terms, fell 18.7%, to 202,324 tonnes.
Lusa previously reported that the ports of Cape Verde handled a record 1,089,013 passengers in 2021, an increase of 43.5% compared to 2020, recovering from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic.
According to the annual traffic report prepared by Enapor, in the space of one year, over 330,270 passengers were handled, in departures and arrivals, compared to 758,743 in all of 2020.
With this performance, Cape Verde’s ports once again surpass the mark of one million passengers handled in a year, reached for the first time in 2019, then with 1,069,642 and an increase of almost 9% compared to 2018.
According to data from Enapor, the ports of Cape Verde handled, globally, 6,802 ships at calls (+5.7%) during the year 2021, while the movement of goods also rose (8.4%), to 2,355,883 tonnes.
Maritime passenger connections were completely suspended by the Government of Cape Verde between late March and mid-May 2020, with the state of emergency, to contain the transmission of covid-19.
As of September 3, 2020, the ships that guarantee these inter-island connections will be able to use up to 75% of the capacity on trips longer than three and a half hours, against the 50% stipulated since the service resumed in May, due to the covid-19 pandemic, as provided for in a resolution of the Council of Ministers.
These restrictions were fully lifted in August 2021, by decision of the Cape Verdean Government, in view of the advanced vaccination process against covid-19, forcing passengers to present a negative test or vaccination certificate.
With information from RTP