Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

There is less con­ges­tion and a de­cline in the Christ­mas traf­fic at the Port of Port-of Spain, says op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Ri­car­do Gon­za­les. Gon­za­les said, "The Christ­mas ac­tiv­i­ties this year are his­tor­i­cal­ly not the same com­pared to last year. We find that the ac­tiv­i­ties are less ac­tive around this time, which be­gan from the peak sea­son: Oc­to­ber 1 and ends Jan­u­ary 31." Gon­za­les at­trib­uted the slow down of traf­fic and re­duced con­ges­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty moved their car­go ear­li­er to avoid de­lays in the peak sea­son.

An­oth­er rea­son, he said, was the par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Au­to­mat­ed Sys­tems for Cus­toms Da­ta (Asy­cu­da) sys­tem, which may have helped in terms of turn­around time for car­go. Gon­za­les said the port re­ceived a 36 per cent in­crease in space in the area of Shed Nine, which al­lowed them to be more ef­fi­cient and in­creased their ca­pac­i­ty to func­tion faster. "So, the traf­fic was dis­trib­uted through­out the year." He said the over­all vol­umes of car­go for 2012 was low­er by 15,000 20-foot equiv­a­lent units (TEUs) com­pared to 2011 as well. In 2011, be­tween Jan­u­ary-Oc­to­ber, the port moved a vol­ume of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 317,401 TEUs com­pared to 302,906 TEUs for the same pe­ri­od for 2012.

This de­cline, Gon­za­les said, was trans­lat­ed in­to a four per cent drop in ex­ports for 2012 com­pared to 2011 and a six per cent de­cline in trans­ship­ment for the same pe­ri­od. He said in the area of trans­ship­ment, there were some chal­lenges in four re­gion­al ports, name­ly Man­zanil­lo in Pana­ma, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Carta­ge­na in Co­lum­bia and Puer­to Ca­bel­lo in Venezuela. "The op­er­a­tion chal­lenges that cre­at­ed con­ges­tion at those ports would have con­tributed to the slight de­cline in our through­put for trans­ship­ment." In con­trast, the vol­ume for im­port car­go in­creased. "There was a 10,000 TEU in­crease in im­ports.

More im­ports were com­ing on a month­ly ba­sis, so the need for the last minute rush seems to have been elim­i­nat­ed." How­ev­er, "su­per­storm" Sandy is now go­ing to cre­ate a last minute rush in De­cem­ber, Gon­za­les said. Sandy hit the Unit­ed States on Oc­to­ber 29 and left parts of the US east coast in sham­bles. "We an­tic­i­pate dur­ing the first two weeks of De­cem­ber that the back­log of car­go due to Sandy is now go­ing place greater de­mand on us to de­liv­er for the Christ­mas sea­son, but we are pre­pared for that." "We have been mon­i­tor­ing the flow of car­go from mid-Ju­ly in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the peak sea­son to have a prop­er plan in place for the sea­son's ac­tiv­i­ties." Gon­za­les said the port would be pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al hours of work, which would be of­fi­cial­ly im­ple­ment­ed from De­cem­ber 1. There was no need to do so ear­li­er as the traf­fic is down. Ad­di­tion­al hours: Mon­day, Wednes­day and Fri­day: 7am-7pm, Sat­ur­days, once nec­es­sary: bar­rel shop Gon­za­les said there is an agree­ment with Cus­toms and Ex­cise to ex­tend these hours to 11 pm to en­sure all cus­tomers mak­ing re­quests on that day would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed. The same would ap­ply for full con­tain­er de­liv­ery if nec­es­sary. An of­fi­cial re­lease of the ex­tend­ed hours of work for the peak sea­son would soon be pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers, Gon­za­les said.

Giv­ing cus­tomers flex­i­bil­i­ty

De­scrib­ing the over­all out­look for the ship­ping in­dus­try for 2012, James De­v­ers, se­nior vice pres­i­dent re­gion­al op­er­a­tions at La­parkan Ship­ping Trinidad Ltd, said it was very chal­leng­ing. De­spite the abil­i­ty to sur­vive and an in­crease in the car­go ship­ments com­pared to 2011, he said, it was still chal­leng­ing. "This has been a good year for La­parkan. It start­ed out a bit slow, but has picked up both in ocean and air freight." De­v­ers at­trib­uted his growth to the var­i­ous of­fer­ings they pro­vide and bet­ter man­age­ment of their cost. "We pro­vide glob­al ship­ping ser­vices from Asia and South Amer­i­ca and that is how we have been able to do well.

We have ex­pand­ed our of­fer­ings to give cus­tomers that flex­i­bil­i­ty.". Gen­er­al­ly, though, when the econ­o­my is not grow­ing and con­struc­tion projects have slowed, they im­pact on cit­i­zens' dis­pos­able in­come." He said it is no dif­fer­ent for the economies of Chi­na and Eu­rope which are grow­ing at a slow pace. De­v­ers said in or­der for the in­dus­try to sur­vive, com­pa­nies have to get cre­ative to meet cus­tomers' de­mands. Re­gard­ing the slow down in the Christ­mas traf­fic at the port, he said com­mer­cial cus­tomers shipped their car­go ear­li­er. "The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is al­so try­ing to avoid over­stock­ing, so there would be no ex­cess in­ven­to­ry in Jan­u­ary. They are cater­ing for the ex­act de­mands of their cus­tomers." How­ev­er, De­v­ers said Amer­i­cans would have been more cau­tious be­fore and dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but now that it's over, we ex­pect a late peak sea­son, where on­line shop­ping is ex­pect­ed to pick up.

On­line shop­ping in­dus­try grow­ing

For Trin­Car­go In­ter­na­tion­al, Chioke AJ Pierre, gen­er­al man­ag­er, said he be­lieved one of the rea­sons for the slow down in Christ­mas traf­fic at the port is due to a high de­mand for on­line shop­ping. Pierre said peo­ple are no longer wait­ing for the ac­tu­al pop­u­lar Thanks­giv­ing and Black Fri­day sales and are shop­ping in ad­vance. "Com­pa­nies have put out ear­ly spe­cials and peo­ple have al­ready be­gan their on­line shop­ping. He said while on­line shop­ping has been utilised by in­di­vid­u­als to buy more per­son­al ef­fects, many com­pa­nies are us­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to have their sup­pli­ers ship items to them be­cause of speed and con­ve­nience. "It takes no more than a week or faster for items to reach T&T.

Goods in the Unit­ed States can be shipped overnight and ar­rive in about two days," he said. Pierre said in the last in the last threee to four years, there has been sig­nif­i­cant growth in on­line shop­ping. For the Christ­mas sea­son, we ex­pe­ri­ence 100 per cent in­crease in on­line shop­ping. On­line shop­ping is tak­ing off in T&T and Latin Amer­i­ca. He said there are sev­er­al new com­pa­nies with­in the last cou­ple years of­fer­ing on­line shop­ping, in­clud­ing Irie, Get Mail and Web Source Ltd. This is a steadi­ly grow­ing mar­ket. Pierre cit­i­zens get bet­ter val­ue for mon­ey through on­line shop­ping be­cause "they ex­pe­ri­ence very high marks-ups lo­cal­ly, they ex­pe­ri­ence is­sues re­gard­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of goods."

He said banks have al­so im­proved their on­line se­cu­ri­ty by pro­vid­ing a bet­ter and more se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions. Pierre said in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies are al­so open­ing up and ac­cept­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it cards. The Asy­cu­da sys­tem, he said, it may have as­sist­ed with the de­crease in traf­fic, but said there could be a bot­tle­neck at the ver­i­fi­ca­tion stage. He said the doc­u­men­ta­tion stage may have been han­dled so quick­ly that Cus­toms may ex­pe­ri­ence a build up at the next lev­el if they do not have suf­fi­cient hu­man re­sources to ef­fi­cient­ly fol­low through. Like La­parkan, he said, Trin­Car­go ex­pe­ri­enced a 30-50 per cent in­crease in its car­go move­ment.