Strike has affected northern and southern ports. Workers are protesting for stronger union organising rights.
Singapore is getting ready to lure manufactures such as Samsung Electronics Co. and Honda Motor Co with a new mega port west of the current 1,000 hectare site, according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Capacity at the port will be doubled to 65 million boxes a year to handle the goods being produced.
“We want to make sure we have capacity to be able to service the growth that can take place going forward,” Singapore’s Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew told Bloomberg.
“We have seen the European countries mired in difficulties for a number of years but will that always be so? We need to be able to look beyond the current difficulties.”
The first phase of the expansion could be completed within the next ten years at a cost of S$10 billion ($7.9 billion) and would take Singapore back to the top spot in the world in terms of capacity after Shanghai overtook it.
Last year Singapore handled 32.6 million TEUs.
Intra-Asia transshipments are expected to grow at twice the predicted increase for East and West trade with other Asian ports also planning extensive developments.
These include plans to extend Yangshan port in Shanghai which in September inaugurated a free-trade zone, plans for a $3.6 billion port in Vietnam able to handle vessels carrying up to 17,000 containers each and Thailand plans to help Myanmar build an $8.6 billion deep-sea port and industrial zone in Dawei, near Bangkok, to export Thai products.
Hong Kong’s plans for a 10th terminal to increase capacity to 27.9 million containers at a cost of almost HK$100 billion ($13 billion) may not be financially viable, reports the South China Morning Post.
