Yesterday, reporting on the publication of the annual ranking of Italian ports relating to traffic in 2023, we talked about “small numbers” with regards to Civitavecchia. But, apparently, the “numbers” continue also in the first part of 2024. As has been the case for a couple of years now, the traditional sending of quarterly data by the specific office in Molo Vespucci has become a particularly complicated exercise .
Previously, the numbers referring to the January-March quarter were sent no later than mid-May; now we have reached mid-June and nothing official is known about how things went in the port of Civitavecchia. The “star” Giulio Andreotti said that by thinking badly you committed a sin but you often got it right. And if you think about it badly, you could hypothesize that the data for the first quarter of 2024 are closed in who knows what drawer of the glass building because they are not exactly sensational, or perhaps because it is better, in the midst of the electoral campaign, not to show that the port, the driving force of the city economy, is at a standstill in many sectors. But, as the old dockers said, men perhaps not cultured but with infinite wisdom, the docks speak. And the docks, according to what the operators in the sector say, obviously in a whisper so as not to put themselves in a bad light, tell of a disappointing first quarter, as was the whole of 2023. Okay, as was the case last year, the passenger sector, i.e. the cruise sector and connections with the islands, Spain and North Africa, but the rest is an absolute cry. Dry bulk cargoes would be at their lowest levels and it couldn’t be otherwise given that throughout the first quarter the coal mines were seen with the lantern, the containers, I’ll tell you right now, continue on their mediocre path and there would also have been a slight decline of goods transported in containers and new cars. In this case it would be a physiological decline, after the boom of the last 24 months, unique in the entire commercial panorama of the seaport. In short, the “numbers” of the port of Civitavecchia remain as they are. However, there is a thread of hope regarding the second half of the year, which will end in just over two weeks and for which we will officially know the data around October. Thanks to the recovery of steel production there would be a good growth in the handling of ferrous materials. God save Terni…
