Port Traffic in Cape Verde Increased to 133,000 Passengers in December

According to the monthly traffic report from Enapor, the public company responsible for managing the archipelago’s nine ports, December’s record 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 constrained by measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.

The previous all-time high in inter-island shipping was recorded precisely in August 2021, with an overall movement of 168,901 passengers.

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Cape Verde ports overall handled 6,802 ships in port calls (+5.7%) during 2021

Last December, the movement of passengers in Porto Grande represented 34.1% of the total and Porto Novo 30.1%, respectively in the neighboring islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão. The port of Praia, the country’s capital, recorded a 14.8% share of the total, with a movement that increased to 19,851 passengers, indicates the Enapor report, to which Lusa had access today.

CV Interilhas, led (51%) by the Portuguese Transinsular, of the ETE group, holds since August 2019 the concession of the public service of maritime transport of 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.

CV Interilhas alone transported about one and a half million passengers in three years of operations in the archipelago, according to data disclosed in August to Lusa by the company.

Overall, the ports of Cape Verde handled in December 699 calls of ships, up 18.3% compared to the same month of 2021, while the movement of goods, in year-on-year terms, fell 18.7% to 202,324 tons.

Lusa reported earlier that Cape Verde ports handled a record 1,089,013 passengers in 2021, an increase of 43.5 percent compared to 2020, recovering from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic.

According to the annual traffic report prepared by Enapor, 330,270 more passengers, in embarkations and disembarkations, were handled in the space of a year, compared to 758,743 in the whole of 2020.

With this performance, the ports of Cape Verde again surpass the mark of one million passengers moved 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 Enapor data, Cape Verde ports overall handled 6,802 ships in port calls (+5.7%) during 2021, while goods movement also rose (8.4%) to 2,355,883 tons.

Maritime passenger connections were fully suspended by the Cape Verde government between late March and mid-May 2020, with the state of emergency, to contain covid-19 transmission.

As of September 3rd, 2020, the ships that provide these inter-island connections were allowed to use up to 75% of their capacity for trips longer than three and a half hours, compared to the 50% stipulated since the resumption of the service 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, due to the advanced vaccination process against covid-19, requiring passengers to present a negative test or vaccination certificate.

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(Featured image by Secret Travel Guide via Unsplash)

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