Container throughput reached 2.76 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), down slightly from 2.82 million in November. The year-on-year increase for the month compared with a rise of 7.6 percent in November.
That marked the fourth straight month of gains and meant that the annual total for 2012 was at a record 32.5 million TEUs, up from 31.7 million in 2011.
Shanghai overtook Singapore to be the world's busiest container port in 2010 and surpassed 30 million TEUs in 2011, which set a record high at the time, according to the China Communications Ministry.
Singapore port's official data for 2012 has not yet been released, but in November Shanghai was ahead by over one million TEUs, according to data from the related port groups, suggesting the Chinese port should end 2012 in pole position.
The numbers come ahead of China's December trade data. Economists polled by Reuters expect annual exports to grow 4 percent in December from a year ago, up from a surprisingly sluggish 2.9 percent expansion in November, while annual imports are seen to have risen 3 percent last month, up from November when growth was flat. (Reuters)
