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The full press release from DHB is given below and is interesting for the interpretation it chooses to put on the figures in the table appended.
Given that we are presently experiencing the most catastrophic economic downturn since the great depression in the thirties, how can things be so rosy? The answer seems to lie in the figures that DHB have chosen to highlight and the crucial one which they have chosen to ignore.
Passengers, cars and coaches increased in January. A subsequent press release from DHB attributes this to the record snow falls in Europe coinciding with the school holidays, with skiers heading off for the slopes in droves.
However, the main part of the press release below is concerned with how the freight traffic through Dover bears a close correlation with UK manufacturing output and an inverse relationship to unemployment figures. It goes into details of the constant rise in freight over the last decade and then fails to mention that the figure in the appended table shows that freight fell in January by 2.2 percent. Extrapolated over the year to come, this would seem to indicate a catastrophic decline in prospect.
Bearing this in mind, what do we make of Bob Goldfield's closing statement "We only hope that Dover's continued growth will soon be reflected in the overall state of the UK economy." In what way is a fall in freight traffic of 2.2 percent in a single month a measure of Dover's continued growth?
I have to say that I view this press release as a classic case of using good news in the form of a temporary blip in tourist traffic as a way of masking the true underlying looming catastrophe confronting Dover and the UK, that of economic freefall as demonstrated in the freight traffic starting what may prove to be a precipitate decline. I think that the freight figures were already on their way down towards the end of last year as the recession commenced to bite but were temporarily boosted by the Eurotunnel fire.
My uncomfortable suspicion as to why Bob Goldfield should choose to present the January results as good news is that he is still desperately hoping that his grand plan for Terminal 2 at the Western Docks can still be considered to have any prospect of seeing the light of day. This, to my mind, is a dead duck and perhaps the time has come for BG and Dover to get a grip on reality and recognise the fact.
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Dover continues to buck economic trend 24 February 2009
Dover continues to buck the UK's economic trend with the number of cars travelling through the port in January increasing by over 20 percent on the same month last year.
In addition, passenger figures for January show a 14 per cent increase and the number of coaches using Dover has increased by 20 per cent on the same month last year. Nearly three-quarters of a million people used the port in January and the number of cars reached nearly 150,000.
The figures come as research into Dover's traffic volumes over the past 12 years by Scott Wilson, the leading international design and engineering consultancy, shows the port of be a gauge of UK performance as a whole. The research highlights the correlation between activity at the port and UK manufacturing and employment since 1996.
Plotted together, the volume of inbound freight through the Port of Dover and the indexed growth of manufacturing output in the UK show an approximately parallel trendline, indicating that an increase in inbound freight corresponds to a proportional increase in manufacturing output. Since 1996, inbound freight at Dover has grown by 115 percent and UK manufacturing output has increased by 7.6 per cent.
According to the same research by Scott Wilson, the volume of outbound freight through Dover shows an inverse relationship with unemployment, with the average annual 1.7 per cent growth of outbound freight traffic, which has increased by 126 percent since 1996, over double the decline of unemployment in the UK in the same period.
"Research of the activity at the port over the past 12 years shows Dover to be a true barometer of the economic condition of the UK as a whole. We only hope that Dover's continued growth will soon be reflected in the overall state of the UK economy," says Bob Goldfield, Chief Executive of the Port of Dover.
Port of Dover
Total 2009 Total 2008 %
Passengers 735,330 646,166 +13.8
Cars 148,470 122,809 +20.9
Coaches 3,976 3,310 +20.1
Road Haulage Vehicles 181,382 185,470 -2.2
Vessel Entries - Ferry 1,645 1,581 +4.0
Vessel Entries - Catamaran 0 20 -100
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