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Friday, July 11, 2025

Terminal handling charges increase

by

20120823

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is call­ing on ship­ping lines to jus­ti­fy a 12 per cent in­crease in Ter­mi­nal Han­dling Charges (THC) which stake­hold­ers of the port and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty must pay from Sep­tem­ber. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the TTMA said that it "un­der­stands that one ship­ping line, CMA CGM has no­ti­fied mem­bers of a 12 per cent in­crease in the THC from US$169 to US$189, ef­fec­tive from Sep­tem­ber 1." The state­ment point­ed out that the in­crease was the sec­ond in six months and that sev­er­al oth­er ship­ping lines had ad­vised that in­creas­es in the charges will be im­ple­ment­ed. Ter­mi­nal han­dling charges (THC) are fees col­lect­ed by ship­ping lines to cov­er the cost of load­ing or un­load­ing con­tain­ers on to ships from the con­tain­er ter­mi­nals and from the ship to the con­tain­er ter­mi­nal. In a state­ment, TTMA said: "These in­creas­es add to cost of in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing which will af­fect the cost of fin­ished prod­ucts, and this will like­ly be passed on to the con­sumers. This places our man­u­fac­tur­ers in an un­com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion not on­ly in the lo­cal mar­ket but al­so in the ex­port mar­kets."

In the state­ment, the TTMA added that the fee in­crease will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on im­port­ed goods as well and will add to the ris­ing cost of do­ing busi­ness in T&T. The TTMA said the in­creased costs would lead to a de­cline in the de­mand for prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured in T&T, which would lead to de­clines in pro­duc­tion lev­els. The man­u­fac­tur­ers called on the ship­ping lines to re-think the de­ci­sion to im­pose the in­crease in light of the neg­a­tive im­pact it will have on the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. TTMA di­rec­tor, Paul Ques­nel said be­tween March and Au­gust there were in­creas­es in the bunker sur­charge and the ter­mi­nal han­dling charge and that these in­creas­es were im­pact­ing on the com­pet­i­tive­ness of man­u­fac­tur­ers. Ques­nel said man­u­fac­tur­ers now have to pay more to ex­port their prod­uct.

Ques­nel re­it­er­at­ed that ship­ping lines should ex­plain to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty the rea­son for the fre­quent in­crease in charges. De­scrib­ing the fre­quent in­creas­es as "alarm­ing" he said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty un­der­stands the cost of do­ing busi­ness must in­crease but not as of­ten. Mean­while, Col­in Lu­cas, gen­er­al man­ag­er at the Port of Port-of-Spain (PPOS), said no tar­iffs have been in­creased at the port but PPOS is "cer­tain­ly con­sid­er­ing an in­crease. In­fla­tion has erod­ed our buy­ing pow­er." He added PPOS has been "hold­ing off" on in­creas­ing charges at the port but may in­crease those charges soon. He could not say when. The TTMA and the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T plan to host a fo­rum on ship­ping and lo­gis­tics on Sep­tem­ber 12 to talk about the is­sues af­fect­ing trade.


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