Japan ports struggle to attract container ships

TOKYO: Japan is taking steps to attract more container ships to its shores, driven by concerns that the waning fortune of its ports could hurt the country's economy and industries.
Over the past decade, an increasing amount of goods from Japan have been sent to a neighbouring Asian trans-shipment hub, such as the South Korean port of Pusan, instead of being shipped directly to their destination, adding to time and costs.

Ken Abe, a deputy director at Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, said given Japan's expensive distribution costs, the move made sense if goods were being moved from areas on the coast facing South Korea.

The trouble is that even large Japanese ports like Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe ... are facing the same problem despite the fact that it should be more efficient to ship goods directly from there, Abe said.

Trans-shipment of goods from Japan rose to 15.5 per cent in 2003, up from 2.1 per cent in 1993, official data showed.

Alarmed by the situation, Japan in 2004 launched a long-term project to expand and improve port efficiency.

Japan has about 60 container ports but the project, according to industry sources, calls for concentrating on three regional ports.

These are Tokyo-Yokohama, Nagoya-Yokkaichi and Osaka-Kobe, with some 52.4 billion yen earmarked for the year ending March 31 2008 alone for improvement measures, up 37.5 per cent year-on-year.

The measures include steps to trim the time needed for goods to be unloaded and moved through customs from the current roughly three days to one day, putting it on a par with Singapore.

It also hopes to cut handling costs by about 30 per cent, which would make it about equal to Pusan and Taiwan's Kaohsiung.

Source:Business Times