‘Rest day’ protest set at Manila ports 

MANILA, Philippines — Some customs brokers and truckers are expected to halt operations today at Manila’s ports in a voluntary “rest day” protest over what they say is foreign shipping lines’ failure to address a mounting backlog of empty containers that has disrupted cargo flows since 2025.

The protest calls on customs brokers to hold off on securing gate passes, booking trucks and releasing shipments, while truckers are being urged not to haul containers until shipping lines provide enough space to take back their empty boxes.

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Reynaldo Soliman, chair of the Practicing Customs Brokers and Port Truckers Alliance of the Philippines Inc. (PCBAPI), said the protest could last for a week, depending on the response from shipping lines and the government.

Although the protest is voluntary, Soliman expects broad participation among practicing customs brokers serving terminals at the Port of Manila. He estimated that around 3,000 brokers could take part.

“Even though we want to ship, we can’t move,” Soliman said in an interview with the Inquirer, claiming that even without the protest, only 10 percent of goods at Manila ports are moving while the rest face backlogs.

At the center of the dispute are empty shipping containers that Soliman said can take two weeks to a month to be accepted for return after imported goods have been unloaded.

The problem has persisted since December but worsened around August, he said, when truckers increasingly resorted to temporarily storing empty containers in their own yards to free up vehicles for other shipments.

Those storage spaces, he added, have since filled up.

Soliman estimated that thousands of empty containers are now stranded on trucks and in private container yards awaiting acceptance.

“They (shipping lines) don’t have a container yard. That is why we are demanding that they provide a container yard depot to solve the congestion,” he said.

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In a statement, PCBAPI called on shipping lines not to neglect their “business, social, and moral obligation and responsibility” to provide adequate depots for their empty containers.

“Vacate your empty containers now, bring them home to the origin,” PCBAPI said.

“We pay what you want, we deserve better services,” it added.

Soliman said the bottleneck had also driven up logistics expenses through detention, storage and trucking costs.

“Our demand is to remove the pileup to normalize and lower the cost of our food and other goods. It’s a pass-on cost,” he said.

Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said exporters would naturally be concerned about any disruption, although he did not expect the protest to deliberately hold up urgent shipments.

He nevertheless said the dispute showed longstanding problems involving foreign shipping lines.

“There should be a way that we can regulate shipping lines,” Ortiz-Luis told the Inquirer.

PCBAPI’s calls for a rest day could prove critical as it coincides with the fourth-quarter peak shipping season.

Soliman said Manila’s ports handle around 70 percent of the country’s imports, with the remainder passing through Batangas, Subic and other international gateways.

Despite exports reaching a record high of $9.11 billion in August, the Philippines continued to ship in more goods than it sent out, with imports rising to $12.96 billion during the month amid higher commodity prices and the front-loading of supplies ahead of the super El Niño. INQ