Bad roads choke Chennai box terminal

Thanks to bad roads and the absence of sufficient exit routes that hamper movement of trucks, Chennai port is in a mess.The port is overflowing with containers, and, as an official of a leading Custom House Agency said,the situation is very grim.

The following statistic gives an idea of how grim the situation is,reported The Hindu. The DP World Chennai's yard can hold 8,000 TEUs, but as of this morning, there were 13,000 TEUs in the terminal, comprising 6,275 imported containers and 1,455 containers waiting for the ships.

“There is hardly any space for moving the containers within the terminal, leave alone moving them out of the port,” an official said.

If this situation continues longer, some automobile companies in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could face production hits. In fact, one car manufacturer had brought in 15 technicians from abroad for a “special project”. These people have been staying idle for the last five days because the imported components for the “project’’ are stuck in the port.

Meanwhile, import boxes keep piling up with each passing day. Some of the shipping lines have even stopped accepting export cargo in the last three to four days due to the situation. This means an exporter needs to wait for things to normalise or move to another port. In fact, DP World Chennai, which operates the berths in the port, has appealed to the trade to “rationalise’’ their imports and exports, in view of the congestion.

Due to congestion, a container ship that used to stay at the terminal for two days now stays for over four days. The total stay – right from the time of a ship's arrival at Chennai port's anchorage to the time it departs from the terminal – has increased to nearly six days from the earlier three, he said.

A ship with a capacity of around 2,000 boxes pays a daily berth hire charge of around US$2,204, and another $2,204 as charter hire.

“We are more than double the cost due to delay,” he said. The problem arose mainly due to external factors such as not having enough entry/exit gates, and bad roads — not due to “operational issues”, an official of the port said.

“Trucks are unable to come on time and pick up the boxes,” said an official.
(Source:www.cargonewsasia.com)