Exim trade bleeds at Chennai Port

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai on October 29, 2011:

Source:http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/exim-trade-bleeds-at-chennai-port/327706.html

CHENNAI:  Export and import of various products in containers via Chennai Port has been badly affected for the past two months after a number of vessel operators had imposed ‘Chennai Trade Recovery’ (CTR), a hefty trade surcharge, to cope with their forced delays at the port. 

Though the CTR surcharge was imposed on  traders after reports of congestion in the port two months ago, it’s still being collected from all importers and exporters even after the congestion has ‘officially’ gone.

According to traders, the surcharge of 200 USD (over Rs 10,000) per container (Twenty-foot-equivalent-TEU) has robbed them off their profits and most of them are considering discontinuance of the trade from Chennai Port as it has become unviable.

In the overall exports done in containers via ChPT, about 60 per cent exports constitute the low-profit category and prices of those products are determined in international markets and bound by delivery commitment.

Due to levy of CTR, most of the low-profit exporters have been left in the lurch and they are continuing their trade only to keep their commitment to overseas clients. Items like maize, chillies, onion and groundnut (agricultural products), feldspar, quartz stone and granite rough blocks (minerals), chemical and coir products are exported from Chennai Port regularly.

“Future for traders like us is bleak as the surcharge has taken away the profits and many of us have seriously started thinking to get out of the business,” Kumar, an exporter of coir products to European countries, told  Express from Tiruchy.

Even if vessel operators had imposed the trade surcharge on exporters to minimize their losses due to forced and unscheduled halts at the Chennai Port, it was the primary duty of the Port Trust management and the Commerce Ministry to regulate it, but both of them have failed to take any initiative so far to force the operators to withdraw the CTR, lamented Kumar.
While holding the Chennai Port Trust management fully responsible for the CTR surcharge, various chambers representing the traders told Express that the chairman of ChPT, Atulya Misra, has the power to stop CTR at once and his swift action would only bring the much-needed relief to the trade via Chennai Port.

“Bad roads and the ChPT’s poor planning to evacuate containerised cargoes created the congestion and because of that, vessels are forced to wait either at anchorage or at the wharf to offload containers more than the stipulated period,” a traders’ association representative told Express.

When contacted, Chennai Port Trust chairman Atulya Misra said that the surcharge had been levied by the operators on exporters and the management was not responsible for the same.