Article - 47 Week 3 Port Congestions And Who Pays The Price?

Article - 47 Week 3

Port Congestions And Who Pays The Price?

Port congestions can surprise us at any time. No need to seek justifications in the monsoons, a rogue Union holding the trade to ransom, a transport strike, bad roads, an arthritic reach-stacker or crane huffing away to a coma, a latest TAMP ruling, and many such stale stories. When things are OK, all these appear to disappear. Not for very long. From CCTL, GTI, NSICT, GTI, JNPT, Kolkata or Haldia or even PSA Sical in Tuticorin, all give us shock therapies from time to time. 

These are on expected lines, considering our rickety poor governance and infrastructure. Just like road jams, we can expect Terminal jams. However, it is interesting to note that the parties who are made to pay the price have no role to play in the creation of this mess and the parties who have a role to play in cooking up this mess, end up benefitting from the situation - unduly and ghastly ! 

The real sufferers are the exporters, importers, and the shipping lines. The shipments get delayed and can go into order cancellations. Some do not reach the factory when you need them. Some don't reach the market, when it is acutely needed. Some cargo even deteriorate. The shipping lines are held like hostages. The equipments get prisoned in ports. Ships wait and wait. Some times, they put emergency surcharges on the cargo to recover their costs much to the disdain of the clients and the trade. The transporters too lose employment for the period and bide for their time to make good.

The ports have nothing to lose. They keep collecting huge amount of storage charges from the cargo, stuck in their custody. Since the scale and slab of the storage charges spiral upwards to the sky with passing of days : the longer the congestion, the merrier they are. The Port Authorities stay nonchalant on the face of these challenges, simply because they literally behave like landlords. 

We need to have a Policy where the trouble maker gets punished for the extra costs and the innocents are kept insulated from damages - which is not their making. The trouble is that in most of the cases there is no single agent responsible for the mess and apportioning the blame is a tough ask. And we have the excuse of bad infrastructure and governance to cover our skins so eloquently. 

In such a complex situation, it is better to shift the pain from the end-user to the Terminal Management. At least they have the self-interest and the voice-box decibels to solve the problems quickly. The exporters and importers are prisoners to so many masters including the nuances of time aberration on commodities or factories, where futures are being traded. The prisoners have neither the voice nor the power to solve the congestion problems, even when they are bled to death. Let's have a fair system in place.

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Brgds

Capt Rath

Econship Marine

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