SIBU (May 02): It has been a remarkable year for the Rajang Port Authority (RPA) here, in 2013.

Despite registering a decrease in total throughput and container handling, it posted a net profit of RM7.1 million.

According to its chairman, Vincent Goh Chung Siong, the net profit was higher than the RM5 million recorded in 2012.

In a statement here today, he said that RPA's total throughput had seen a decline from the 3.26 million tonnes in 2012, to 2.126 million tonnes last year.

"Our core business in container handling has also recorded a decrease of 8,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units).

"We have achieved 89,531 TEUs in 2012. It is a challenge for us in the current year, to surpass that to over 90,000 TEUs," he said.

He said that in the past two to three years, RPA had been undergoing some significant changes, in terms of the role it played as a port in the state's central region.

"There were changes too in the scope of our business and the effects of such changes.

"Together with the nearby Tanjung Manis Port, we are right in the middle of the development of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy or Score. It has been very challenging for RPA to re-engineer itself to adapt to the change in the business climate," he said.

The port, he added, would look forward to further upgrading its facilities and equipment, to provide its customers with the best possible services.

RPA general manger, Helen Lim Hui Shyan, said it would continue to invest in quality human resource development, in order to achieve an even better result this year.

She said that the good result in 2013, despite the setbacks in container handling and throughput, was due to RPA "engineering itself to tap on its more profitable revenue earners, as well as to exercise a prudent management of its costs."