Home ›› 06 Nov 2021 ›› Front
The countrywide transport strike protesting against the fuel price hike caused container congestions at the Chattogram port on Friday as goods were not transported to their destinations since morning.
There were 33,330 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers in the port yard on Friday.
The capacity of the yard is around 49,000 TEU, meaning it will run out of capacity soon if congestions continue.
Chittagong Port Authority Secretary Mohammad Omar Faruque said no trucks, covered vans, or lorries had entered the port to take goods since morning.
But some containers from the inland container depots (ICDs) had entered the port while a few had been delivered to the ICDs, he said.
He also said goods had been unloaded from ships inside the port as usual.
About 6,000 trucks transport goods from the port to various destinations in the country during normal times every day, including on weekends and other holidays. The government has increased diesel and kerosene prices by Tk 15 per litre due to the continuous rise in fuel prices in the global market. Transport owners stopped transporting goods and passengers since Friday to protest against the hike, saying the government had not adjusted transport fares accordingly.
About 25 per cent of the goods imported via the Chattogram port come in containers. A significant portion of the goods is raw materials of the garment industry.
The pre-shipping of all kinds of export goods was completed at 19 ICDs while the post-shipment of 36 imported goods was also done.
Bangladesh Inland Container Depots Association (BICDA) sources said the ICDs had sent some containers to the port by their own vehicles. But due to a vehicle crisis, exporters were unable to send their products to the ICDs. BICDA Secretary Md Ruhul Amin Sikder Biplob said the ICDs use their own vehicles to transport goods, and that is why it was possible to send some goods to the port.
He said about 2,000 TEU containers of export goods are sent to the port every day, but the proportion was only 20-30 per cent on Friday. There were around 9,000 TEU export, 31,000 empty, and 1,000 import containers at the ICDs on Friday. The ICDs have the capacity to keep 78,000 TEU containers.
Despite container congestions at the port, transportations of bulk cargo, almost 75 per cent of total imports, via rivers remained normal on Friday, said the Water Transportation Cell (WTC), an authority that manages goods transported from the port by waterways.
It said enough lighter ships had been allocated to transport about 1.25 lakh tonnes of goods on Saturday (today).
WTC sources said the diesel price hike had increased goods transportation costs via waterways, but ship owners were trying to figure out ways to make up for the loss without suspending transports in order to avoid massive congestions.
Importers and exporters said they were concerned about the situation. In addition to the risk of major losses in their trade, they feared the situation would turn worse. Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association’s first Vice-President Syed Nazrul Islam said it would not be possible to transport imported raw materials to factories on time if the situation did not ease.
“Similarly, export goods cannot be taken to the port for shipment,” he said.
He also said the impact was not high as Friday was the first day of the strike.
But factory production would be severely disrupted if the congestion continued on Saturday (today), he said.
He suspected the strike was a conspiracy at a time when the garment industry had received a lot of work orders after a long stagnation.
