How the Caribbean is positioning itself as a cargo gateway

El Norte

While business continues to heat up in Central and South America, there is also activity to the north in the vast U.S. market, and South Florida is the main gateway between both regions. The summary of the 2014 report for Mi­ami-Dade County International Trade in Goods noted that, although the city and county accounted for just 2.2 per­cent of the total U.S. trade, it handled 16.4 percent of the U.S. trade with South America and 20.1 percent of the country’s trade with Central America and the Caribbean in 2014.

In terms of airfreight, Miami Inter­national Airport (MIA) handles 85 percent of all air cargo imports and 80 percent of all air exports between the U.S. and the Latin American/Caribbean region. In 2013, MIA handled 40,437 tonnes of air cargo between the U.S. and Caribbean region, worth more than $2.02 billion in trade.

Moving forward, Boeing forecasts that air trade from Latin America to North America is projected to grow 5.2 per­cent annually and air trade to from North America to Latin America will grow 5.3 percent per year for the next 20 years.

Miami-Dade’s biggest export partner in the region was the Dominican Re­public, with almost $2 billion in total exports (air and sea) in 2014, followed by Panama with almost $1.4 billion. Air Cargo Management Group, a partner of Air Cargo World, said in a recent study that not only is trade between the U.S. and the Dominican Republic burgeon­ing, but Panama is benefitting from the short-term trade boom generated by the widening of the Panama Canal.

Interest is also increasing from across the Atlantic. Boeing said the Domini­can Republic is still Europe’s largest air trade partner in the Caribbean, ac­counting for 29.5 percent of the area’s total trade with Europe in 2013. Addi­tionally, Boeing forecasts that air trade between Europe and the Caribbean basin will grow by 3.5 percent annually over the next 20 years, with air cargo traffic from Europe to the Caribbean forecast to grow at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent. Air cargo traffic from the Caribbean to Europe is forecast to grow an average of 4.1 percent annually.