Shippers welcome DBP shipping plan

Cargo trucks, passenger buses, cars and pick-ups move through platforms right into the belly of a ship in an hour or so crosses a channel between two island provinces. At the other end, the vehicles roll out of the ship and straight to their destinations.

That cheap and rapid system of transportation combining road networks, ports and fast ships between islands is already practiced in a limited scale in the Philippines. But in the wake of fast increasing cargo handling charges using traditional shipping systems in the country, most shippers are now ready to accept ro-ro as the best way of moving goods in the near future.

Leaders of the Distribution Management Association of the Philippines, Domestic Shipping Association, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Philippine Exporters Confederation and their allies in the Coalition on Port and Shipping Organization – welcomed the blueprint of the domestic shipping modernization program presented to them by the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).

The plan seeks to build a new alternative system of domestic shipping that is meant to drastically cut down the cost of moving goods between the 7,000 islands that make up the archipelago.

DBP revealed that it has identified a few areas in the Visayas and Mindanao where the new system will be piloted. Putting the system in operation would not be difficult because most of the domestic shipping lines already have ships with roll on-roll off capabilities.

Government ports, however, are not designed for that efficient system of moving goods.

The plan was unfolded in the middle of a media war between port users and cargo handlers over a yearly increase in cargo handling and terminal fee services in major ports in the country controlled by the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) and the Cebu Port Authority.

The latest estimate made by the Center for Research and Communications (CRC) on cargo handling and shipping rates across the islands had shown that stevedoring, arrastre and terminal services fees charged on domestic cargo now make up 49 percent or close to half of the total freight cost paid by shippers in moving goods through the sea.

This, the shippers observe, is equivalent to paying toll fees almost equal to passenger fares at the south super-highway.

Under the new system where vehicles roll in and out of ships at the ports, cargo handling charges will practically be brought down to zero.

The DBP disclosed that it has initial funds to bankroll part of the pilot phase of the domestic shipping modernization program. It is also talking to private sector investors to stake their money in developing ro-ro ports outside those in the hands of the PPA.

This would jibe well with the enunciated policy of government to privatize port operations in the country. The ports, the DBP explained, must be closely tied with the building of roads and bridges that feed on them and mean to interconnect major islands.

It is envisioned as the permanent solution to the worsening problem of high domestic shipping cost. – Abe P. Belena, Philexport News and Features