Summit to address port congestion

CEBU, Philippines - Port stakeholders are alarmed on the congestion of container vans at the Cebu International Port, prompting Oriental Port and Allied Services Corporation (Opascor) to organize a "Port Summit" on February 20.

"Grabe na gyud ang congestion sa mga container vans sa  CIP. We've been receiving complaints from our clients and other port stakeholders, that's why we've decided to hold this summit, so that we can identify asa gyud ang problema and hopefully come up with a concrete solution," said lawyer Mae Velasco, Opascor assistant manager for legal and corporate development.

Opascor operations manager Jonathan Fernandez said that currently, the yard has over 5,000 to 6,000 container vans way beyond its average capacity of 4,000 container vans.

Fernandez said that they have to resort to stocking up to five to six vans high just to accommodate everything.

He said that the average withdrawal of container vans per week is 1,500, but arrival of container vans is at 1,900 per week.

"With this scenario, naa gyud mga 400 containers ang dili ma-release every week, mao na nga mo-pile-up gyud," Fernandez said.

The 1,370 container vans that were already declared as abandoned by the Bureau of Customs Port of Cebu have also contributed to the congestion.

Fernandez recalled that the congestion problem started sometime in October of last year when Customs leadership was in "chaos."

At that time, former customs commissioner Rufino Biazon recalled the position of  all district collectors IV and V which, in effect, designated them as researchers at the Department of Finance.

The affected district collectors filed a case against Biazon while an officer-in-charge replaced the vacated position but few days after, a court issued a temporary restraining order against Biazon's order and some district collectors, including those in Cebu, were back to their position. A week after, however, they were once again moved to DOF.

As these changes in leadership went on, container vans at the CIP continued to pile up.

"Naglibog ang mga importers kung kinsa ang mopirma sa mga release order because we cannot release any container vans without clearance from Customs," Fernandez added.

BOC Cebu district collector Rolando Almadin said that they are still conducting inventories of these container vans and will proceed with the public auction later.

Earlier, Customs commissioner John Sevilla led the opening of six container vans, which were part of the 1,370 container vans that contained used tires, used ambulance, plastic resins and used clothing.

Aside from overstaying containers, other factors cited for the congestion was the reported slow processing of the import entries, examinations, among others, by BOC.

With this, importers then cannot get their container vans promptly, considering that they only have a five to six days free storage of the container vans, otherwise they shall be made to pay a daily storage fee by the shipping company, who shipped these container vans.

Aside from paying storage, importers are also liable to pay for demurrage fees.

"So ang resulta ani, kung ang importer daghan na kaayo siya og additional nga bayranan, ang produkto nga naa sulod sa container vans, ini’g baligya ana sa mga customers, momahal sad," said Velasco.

Reports have also claimed that exporters also cannot export their products in volume due to lack of container vans.

Velasco said that with the upcoming summit which will be held at Casino Español, they hope to come up with an agreement among the port stakeholders on how to solve this problem.

She said that brokers, importers, the business sector, the Philexport, truckers, shipping lines and harbor pilots are expected to join the summit, along with officials from the Cebu Port Authority and the BOC. — (FREEMAN)