Severe container congestion jeopardises operations at Ctg port

Maersk Yokohama, a ship owned by shipping giant Maersk Lines, anchored at the Chattogram port from the Shanghai port, China, on 21 July, with 1,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of import containers. It is supposed to leave the port with 800 TEUs of export containers today (23 July).

But that prospect now seems very unlikely.

Till 23 July afternoon, the ship could not even unload one-third of the import containers as an unprecedented container congestion has emerged at the port due to the ongoing internet blackout and nationwide curfew, which have paralysed economic activities across the country for the last few days.

The crisis has appeared following the widespread violence that gripped the country in the wake of quota-reform protests.

Maersk Lines has no clue how the ship would be able to leave the port maintaining the scheduled time with export containers.

Stakeholders say container delivery works at the port have been completely halted since Thursday night, when internet outage started. Ships are leaving the port without carrying any export containers. Many ships are staying at the jetties as there is no space at the port.

However, according to the port authorities, in an effort to ease the woes of export and import businesses, the port started to clear some consignments – especially perishable goods and industrial raw materials – manually.

Shipping companies say they never faced such a crisis before.

Michael Rodriguez, senior official of Sea Consortium, told TBS, that their ship MV Escada arrived at the port on 21 July from Colombo, Sri Lanka. The ship was approved to enter the jetty of the port on 22 July.

"We faced huge difficulties in unloading the 800 TEUs of containers from the ship as there is no space in the port yard. The ship is scheduled to leave the port on 24 July," he said.

He further said the ship is supposed to load 800 TEUs of export containers during its return journey. Around 600 TEUs arrived before last Thursday. But it is uncertain when the remaining 200 TEUs will arrive.

"We are concerned whether the ship would be able to leave the port on time," said the official.

Liaqat Ali, port affairs secretary of Chattogram port, told TBS, "Getting delivery orders from shipping agents has been stopped due to the internet outage and general holiday. It has not been possible to pay duties of goods as banks are closed. As a result, the process of taxation of new import shipments has been stopped."

However, he said, the customs have been manually approving the delivery of shipments of containers for which the duties were paid prior to the internet blackout that occurred on Thursday night.

"On Monday, the customs cleared around 100 containers of products through manual process. On Tuesday, the amount increased a little bit," he said.

Md Omar Faruque, secretary of the Chattogram Port Authority, also told TBS that the customs have approved the delivery of some shipments manually.

According to port data, during the 24 hours from 8am on 22 July to 8am 23 July, 65 TEUs of import containers were delivered at the port.

On the other hand, during the same time, 948 TEUs of import containers were unloaded and 1,220 TEUs of export containers and 824 TEUs of empty containers were loaded to the ships.

During the 24 hours from 8am on 22 July to 8am 23 July, the port released around 76,000 tonnes of import products.

In normal times, the port handles around 3,500-4,500 TUEs of import containers per day.

According to port data, the Chattogram port has a capacity to accommodate 53,518 TEUs of containers.

The port needs to keep 15% open spaces for the movement of containers. At around 8am yesterday, there were 41,620 TEUs of containers kept at the port.

Earlier, during the 24 hours from 8am on 21 July to 8am 22 July, more than 2,100 imported twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) containers were unloaded and about 1,900 TEUs export consignment loaded.

Considering volumes, Chattogram is the largest port which handles around 90% of the country's export and import items.

The port – known as the key gateway for the country's seaborne international trade – handled more than 5,000 containers on that day.

In a meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday, the country's business leaders requested for restoring internet connection at the earliest possible time to facilitate export and import activities, which have badly impacted by the complete shutdown and internet blackout.