Container shipments in Subic up

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — Container traffic at the Port of Subic continues to increase with the volume handled here doubling within a year, officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) said.

SBMA Chair Roberto Garcia said container shipments reached 83,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August compared to 43,000 TEUs in the same month last year.

In a statement, Garcia attributed the 93-percent spike in container volume to the efforts by the agency and its locators to hasten cargo processing.

“We are the only port in Luzon that has a one-stop shop and this gives us the competitive edge,” he said.

“They come to our container port, go to our one-stop shop where offices of the SBMA, Bureau of Customs and the Land Bank of the Philippines are in one place. In just… 30 minutes, their papers are already processed,” Garcia said.

He also noted that the increasing cargo and container volume here would soon decongest Metro Manila, an observation that Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier shared.

Marcos had described Subic Bay Freeport as a “duplicate key” to unlocking Metro Manila’s problems during the general membership meeting last month of the Subic Bay Freeport Chamber of Commerce.

He said the capital’s gridlock was tied to port congestion.

“Subic has the inherent capacity to establish itself as a viable alternative, to provide significant relief to the urban congestion in Metro Manila,” Marcos said.

Subic Bay is the only port on the western seaboard of the Philippines that still has enough capacity to handle more container volume, Garcia said.

He said that unlike the Port of Batangas, which has reached its full capacity, shippers can come to Subic any time.

Seven major shipping lines regularly dock at Subic Bay, he said.