Singapore Desk -(11)

The Big Opportunity To Coastal Shipping: (4)

A Critical Look At The Ports: Part – 2 (Bureaucracy)

 

Our bureaucratic system that manages our ports has smothered not only coastal shipping, but also our international trade. I have personally come across brilliant & dynamic bureaucrats in the ports who passionately wanted to right the wrongs, but in vain. The TAMP validates the wrongs as the rights – helplessly though. The demonic red tapes do not allow them. The Unions strangle them.

 

Port administrations have a huge staff with many departments, many of them redundant and disused, but act as a force to slow things down.  Let me try to cover a few departments and their deterrent acts. The traffic department allocates berths, internal logistics, & storage.  It is badly done. Ships are stuck inside due to slow operations. Ships wait outside to get a place. When there is congestion, you need to grease palms to get a berth. This is not the case with private ports. The marine departments are headed & manned by Master Mariners, who have adapted themselves to the new system quickly. They control the pilotage and ship movements with unmatched ineptitude and arrogance. They too need their hands greased. They work totally out of synch with the traffic department. Ships, both inbound and outbound are made to wait with the drop of a hat. Berth utilizations are never optimized with the vacant berths left unoccupied by the next vessel in line for many dead hours and dead days. I reiterate the fact that this stems from systemic fault lines and there is absolutely nothing to blame the people in the system. You need to push papers through a maze of departments to get a simple thing done. Even, the CISF have their own fiefdom to slow things down as much as they can as per the laid out standards of red tape. ISPS (though useful when used wisely) is followed up like God's gospel with little regard to home truths. The recent Mumbai terrorists coming into the heart of the city in Mumbai to hold the nation to ransom, tells us that our security concerns have no answer in the ISPS alone. Customs department acts as an all-pervading ugly monster to crush any signs of efficiency that might survive the incessant badgering by the above-mentioned departments. Their systems and controls are archaic & arcane, that can stamp out logic & rationality, on any sunny day. Without going into specifics, we can conclude safely that the system pushes cost to the sky, pushing domestic prices high, much to the little Indian's misery and rendering international trade uncompetitive against the likes of China or even Bangladesh. The Indian port tariffs for a vessel is four to fives times higher than that of Malaysia or Singapore, while the quality of service provided could be as low as one-fifth. For some strange reason, the pilotage cost is inexplicably high.

 

Solution: The port trusts need to outsource the entire management & operations of ports, including navigation & pilotage to private companies. An open on-line bidding process (Similar to the 3G spectrum auction in UK, where the government made money in billions) can be used. Subsequently the Trust can act as a regulator and collector of revenue-share. One common e-platform should be used by the Customs, Port, Banks, RBI, DGFT, DG shipping, Shipping line and all other government departments for coastal movement, exports and imports. This automation can cut on duplications and red tapes. Parts of the port should be declared as national free zones for coastal cargo to exclude the legitimacy of the Unions. Gradually the free zone should be extended to push the Unions out. Once the management is successfully outsourced and Unions are edged out, the tariffs could be rationalized, based on fair costs. In addition to these measures, national ship owning can be accelerated using the principles of 'Smart Flag' as enunciated earlier. This can be a composite solution to the menace of 'Unions' & 'red tapes'.