Dublin Port trade up for fifth month in a row

Dublin Port said today that trade volumes in April rose by 5.4% compared to the same month last year, the fifth consecutive monthly rise in trading activity.

The company said the growth was driven by exports, which increased by 13.5% on April last year, while imports for the month grew by 0.6%.

Ferry passengers were meanwhile up 40% on April 2009 figures, to 207,066. The increase was partly attributed to flight disruption caused by the ash crisis.

“Whatever way you look at Ireland’s current economic predicament there is only one solution: we’ve got to trade our way out of the problem and the figures from Dublin Port showing a trend of steady, incremental, increased trading activity for a sustained period of five months are encouraging in this regard," Dublin Port Chief Executive Enda Connellan said.

Economist Jim Power meanwhile said that increasing exports was of "paramount importance".

"While underlying economic challenges clearly remain, we should take a good deal of encouragement that exports through Dublin Port are 14.4% higher for the first four months of 2010 than the corresponding period last year," Mr Power said.