— and Irma Isip
THE Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) yesterday warned the possibility of the country’s premier port shutting down if cargo owners and consignees continue to shun calls to withdraw their cleared, ready-for-delivery and overstaying cargoes.
This developed as the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) said trade disruption at the Manila international container terminal (MICT) could only worsen before it gets better and urged for a bigger and broader solution to ease the burden at the country’s principal gateway.
Heavy fines
The Bureau of Customs, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Agriculture , among others, are now looking at measures to prevent congestion at the ports after the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases issued an order to clear the ports with containers.
Among the considered measures include the forfeiture of overstaying cargoes in favor of government and reducing the cargo clearing period as well as the free storage period from the current allowable time. These will force cargo owners to withdraw as they will be burdened with heavy fines, penalties and storage fees.
Christian Gonzalez, ICTSI executive vice president, said as reefer vans at MICT continue to be unclaimed, dry food and non-reefer containers also continue to pile up at the terminal.
“I fear we’ll (going to start to) a grinding halt pretty soon,” said Gonzalez in an interview by ANC yesterday.
ICTSI operates MICT.
He said the quickest way to ease the backlog of containers stuck at the MICT is for consignees to withdraw their reefer vans from the port as soon as they can.
Gonzalez said the port continues to operate and receive as much as 4,000 twenty-equivalent units (TEUs) on a daily basis for shipments that have been ordered as far back as December and January. However, only 40 percent of those go out of the port.
40,000 TEUs stranded
There are about 40,000 import-laden containers sitting at the MICT of which 25 percent have been cleared before the enhanced community quarantine. Of the 25 percent, 10 percent are refrigerated containers that contain foodstuff.
Gonzalez said a joint memorandum order (JMO) with government agencies like the BOC and the PPA was drawn up to get the reefer containers out of the port.
Another JMO is being worked out to address dry and non-refrigerated
containers where Gonzalez said the next problem will arise as this volume is bigger.
“Those goods are necessary when (businesses) open,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said the lockdown imposed in February and March in other countries would lead to a slowdown in the arrival of imports, but that would only happen in at least two to four weeks.
“Every agency involved, the BOC, PPA and other agencies are working hard. There is a lot of bureaucracy and legal issues that we have to deal with. This is a crisis moment and we work around the bureaucracy,” Gonzalez said.
While ICTSI understands that with business shut and supply chain broken, Gonzalez appealed “to the community whatever you can do, whoever can get their people in factories to help pull out their containers.”
To reduce the stress at the yard, ICTSI, BOC and PPA came up with an interim solution to help small and medium enterprises and even big businesses by transferring their containers to inland facilities in Bulacan, Laguna and Cavite.
“But these are band-aid solutions,” Gonzalez said.
Full-blown congestion
Meanwhile, PPA general manager Jay Daniel Santiago said despite efforts to transfer cleared and overstaying containers from MICT to a facility inside the Manila North Harbor, there are still not enough breathing space for the Manila port terminals to operate efficiently and productively.
“If we continue to ignore calls to withdraw even only those cleared, ready for delivery, and overstaying cargoes, these lungs are in danger of total collapse, resulting in full-blown port congestion, or worst, a shutdown, and consequently a shortage in the much-needed goods and supplies which are expected to address the demands of the market,” Santiago said.
Yard utilization at the Manila international ports, composed of MICT and the Manila South Harbor are almost 100 percent full as majority of cargoes remained idle after the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine some two weeks ago.
As of Friday, March 27, approximately more than 800 cleared reefer vans are inside the MICT containing perishables like food, medicines and other essentials while approximately 2,000 dry containers already cleared and ready for delivery remain inside the terminal. This number as of press time has further increased.
As a stop-gap measure, PPA has authorized an area at the Manila North Harbor, the country’s premiere domestic terminal, for the purpose of the immediate and accelerated transfer of all overstaying foreign containers already cleared for delivery or withdrawal to maintain the high operational efficiency and productivity of the MICT while the entire island of Luzon is under the lockdown.
