On December 21, with only 10 days left to the year-end, the Port of Colombo set a new record by handling four million TEUs, reported Daily Mirror(Sri Lanka).

This achievement of the Port of Colombo is a synergistic effort of the state-run Jaya Container Terminal [JCT] and the privately-owned South Asia Gateway Terminals [SAGT].

Recently, the state-run JCT single-handedly reached a record throughput of two million TEUs in 11 months and by this date the JCT has handled 2.1 million TEUs, contributing the lion's share to the overall volume of four million TEUs. The remaining 1.9 million TEUs have been handled by the privately-owned SAGT.

The four million TEUs handled by the Port of Colombo demonstrates an increase of 20 percent compared to the same period previous year, and an increase of 11 percent compared to the total figure of 3.68 million TEUs handled in 2008.