Transhipment charges unchanged
THE port tariff was reviewed in 2015 but transhipment charges remained unchanged to gain a competitive advantage over other regional ports.
This was highlighted by the Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, in Parliament last week when speaking on major transhipment port in the Pacific region.
Mr Sayed-Khayum said now the shipping lines were incurring lesser costs as a result of port efficiency, improvements and fast turnaround times.
“We got into a public private partnership with Fiji Ports Terminal Ltd and also Fiji Ports Corporation Ltd which saw Aitken Spence coming into Fiji which is a publicly listed company of nearly a 200-year-old company, a fortune 200 company outside USA,” he said.
“We also have a number of turnaround times.”
He said what they also offered now was what they call a 21-day free period which was offered for transhipment from point of discharge to the point of loading, which was considerably a cost-saving for the shipping lines.
He also added that vessels waiting time to acquire berth had considerably been reduced, with port productivity improvements.
“For example in 2012 an average berth waiting time for a vessel was 6.5 hours by 2018, this reduced to less than one hour,” he said.
“The average ship turnaround time or the vessels time at berth in 2012 was 36 hours, which reduced to 22 hours in 2018 despite the volume growth.
“The average gross crane productivity rate or the number of container moves per hour is 5.5 in 2012 which improved to 14 in 2018.”
He said with the mobile harbour cranes now being operational; Fiji Ports Terminal Ltd achieved a productivity of 18 moves per hour.