Talks on CTR surcharge at Chennai Port fails

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai on November 9, 2011:

Source:http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/Talks-on-CTR-surcharge-at-Chennai-Port-fails/331367.html

CHENNAI: The much-awaited stakeholders meet hosted by the Chennai Port Trust to break the impasse on ‘Chennai Trade Recovery’ surcharge collection on Tuesday failed to bring in the desired result.

According to port sources, during the one-hour brainstorming session, where the representatives of 14 major shipping liners and two terminal operators participated, nothing emerged substantially towards the withdrawal of the CTR.

Major shipping liners have collected a whopping Rs 220 crore as CTR surcharge from the exporters and importers using the port from August to November first week, and the collection still continues despite objection from the port management.

Mellowing down from their earlier tough stand, the port trust’s top officials, who were present at the meeting, literally pleaded with the shipping liners to withdraw the CTR surcharge immediately for the sake of importers and exporters.

On the other hand, representatives of the shipping liners toughened their stand during the meeting and ‘clarified’ that the CTR surcharge was imposed primarily due to the port’s poor facilities to evacuate containers via gates.

Heeding to the liners’ contention on evacuation problems, top official of the port trust in the meeting announced that the management should improve its facilities at the port’s gates to evacuate about 3,400 import containers (against the 2,400 now) per day.

It may be noted that the first terminal - Chennai Container Terminal Limited (CCTL) evacuates about 1,700 import containers every day (on an average till now) and the second terminal - Chennai International Terminals Pvt Ltd (CITPL) about 700.

Under the proposed plan by the port authorities, CCTL would be equipped to move out 2,500 import containers and the CITPL could evacuate 900 of them on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, the assurance by the port trust failed to make any impact on the shipping liners’ representatives and they decided to ‘consult’ their top bosses in Singapore to think about withdrawing CTR surcharge from Chennai Port.

Speaking to Express after the meeting, a top port official said that the deadlock is likely to be over within a week.

Meanwhile, several trade bodies, who have represented the issue with the Chennai Port Trust in the past, were disappointed after the port management failed to invite them for the all-important meeting on Tuesday.

More negotiations on the CTR issue likely to held next week at the Chennai Port.