Lawmaker warns of another port congestion

A LAWMAKER yon Thursday urged port stakeholders to prepare for huge volumes of cargoes expected to arrive in the last four months of the year to prevent a repeat of the congestion that sent both the government and private sector reeling from delays and huge losses in their respective operations.

“Now that we have learned our lesson from last year, we must not let our guard down. This early, we must ensure that congestion will not hamper port operation during the coming ‘ber’ months,” Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV said in a statement issued Thursday.

Aquino, chair of the Senate committee on Trade, Commerce and Entrepreneurship, said while port operations have returned to normal, the heavy volume of containers expected to arrive between September and December may result in another port congestion of 2014 occurring anew.

Utilization rate at the Manila port currently stands at about 70 to 80 percent. The waiting time for trucks has also significantly improved. Cargo ships can also now load or unload cargoes in a matter of hours, instead of days as seen at the height of the bottleneck last year.

Last year’s port mess saw production delays, work stoppages for some industries, higher shipping and trucking charges, as well as losses and foregone revenues and investments.

Since then, however, the government has implemented new measures that helped resolve the port crisis.

In a related development, Aquino noted that the passage of the Foreign Ships Co-Loading Act or Republic Act No. 10688 will be able to help relieve congestion at the country’s major ports. The new law allows foreign liners to transport import and export cargo from one port to another.

“This will save time, costs and energy for our exporters and importers in sending their raw materials, and goods and products in and out of the country,” Aquino said. “By allowing foreign ships to go directly to other domestic ports around the country, it will lower production costs for our entrepreneurs, free up space in the Port of Manila, improve the import and export system of the country.”

The said law is also expected to turn the shipping industry into a more modern, more equipped and more competitive sector, enabling it to keep up with other gateway Asean countries such as Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, Aquino added.