Cargo agents call on Government to remedy transshipment congestion in Port

Hiran H. Senewirathne

CONTAINER TRAFFIC: The Clearing and Forwarding Agents (CFA) urge the Government to handle all domestic containers outside the Colombo Port as a solution to ease heavy container traffic.

This was due to increase of transshipment from Indian sub continent, its Chairman M.S.M Niyas said.

He said that during the last year there was a 10 per cent growth in transshipment and 5 per cent increase in local import and exports in Sri Lanka.

During the last year the Colombo Port Authority handled exceeding 2 million containers, which is now on the increase. During the next few years due to the rapid economic development in Indian and Chinese economies the number of container ship arrivals will increase considerably.

The sources say that during March the JCT handled the highest number of containers while a total of 240,000 containers were handled at the port by JCT and SAGT together.

The JCT handled 2.5 million containers during 2005 out of which 70 per cent were transshipments, which constitutes a growth of 15 per cent.

According to Niyas the Ports Authority should introduce some innovative strategy to face the ever increasing container congestion since they expect major increase in transshipment cargo from India and China due to their economic boom.

Since, the Colombo South harbour is expected to commence its operations during the next four years, it has been necessitated to cater to the increased containers presently.

He said that India having close accessibility to Sri Lanka and China will increase transshipment cargo to Sri Lanka in manyfolds.

Therefore, Colombo Port could anticipate many transshipments in the coming years. As a result all industry stakeholders urge to handle containers outside the Colombo Port vicinity as an immediate solution.