The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is once again ex­press­ing con­cern about the slow pro­cess­ing of con­tain­ers at Trinidad’s ports.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, DO­MA said ur­gent at­ten­tion needs to be giv­en to the wors­en­ing state of in­ef­fi­cien­cy re­gard­ing car­go and cus­toms op­er­a­tions at this time. “

“Based up­on cur­rent mea­sure­ment da­ta in units of move­ment, the Port of Port-of-Spain is now be­ing list­ed by ship­ping lines as the slow­est port in the en­tire Caribbean. The de­lays be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced at the Port of Port of Spain have caused sev­er­al ship­ping lines to wait out­side of the port and to go be­yond their dock­ing dates some­times by as much as al­most two weeks,” the busi­ness group said.

Sev­er­al busi­ness­es and ship­ping com­pa­nies have ex­pressed con­cerns about slow pro­cess­ing of car­go at the Port in re­cent months and its knock-on ef­fect on busi­ness.

DO­MA said busi­ness­es have at­tempt­ed to piv­ot by us­ing the Port of Point Lisas but en­coun­tered prob­lems there as well.

DO­MA said, “How­ev­er, an­oth­er se­ri­ous prob­lem ex­ists at Point Lisas. The Cus­toms and Ex­cise di­vi­sion has re­cent­ly closed its Point Lisas of­fice and re­quires sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments for screen­ing and ap­proval at the San Fer­nan­do Cus­toms of­fice. For many rea­sons, this has cre­at­ed un­ten­able de­lays not on­ly be­cause of the dis­tance be­tween the two points but al­so be­cause the San Fer­nan­do Cus­toms of­fice is now over­bur­dened with its own work and the work of Point Lisas.

“The sit­u­a­tion de­scribed above is be­ing spo­ken about in loud whis­pers be­hind the scenes with no pub­lic state­ments be­ing made for sev­er­al rea­sons. We have re­ceived many phone calls from named and un­named cus­tom bro­kers, ship­ping agents, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and im­porters,” the re­lease con­tin­ued, “While we do not wish to add to the many press­ing mat­ters be­ing faced by the new gov­ern­ment, we do be­lieve that the in­ef­fi­cien­cy that has been de­scribed to us is a dan­ger to the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my. We have been made aware of the like­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty of a ma­jor con­ges­tion sur­charge be­ing im­posed on all car­go des­tined for Trinidad and To­ba­go which could be a fur­ther ma­jor in­put cost.”

DO­MA said the is­sue should be ad­dressed soon as it could ad­verse­ly im­pact this coun­try’s trade di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­port po­ten­tial.

Port Au­thor­i­ty: wait times not ex­ces­sive

Mean­while, the Port Au­thor­i­ty (PATT), through the Port of Port of Spain (PPOS), re­ject­ed DO­MA’s sug­ges­tions of con­sis­tent two-week de­lays.

PATT said that ac­cord­ing to op­er­a­tional da­ta for the past four months, the av­er­age ves­sel wait times were sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er.

Month­ly ves­sel calls and av­er­age wait times:

April 2025: 43 ves­sel calls – av­er­age wait time: 1.4 days

May 2025: 35 ves­sel calls – av­er­age wait time: 2.7 days

June 2025: 40 ves­sel calls – av­er­age wait time: 4.2 days

Ju­ly 2025: 38 ves­sel calls – av­er­age wait time: 2.7 days

The Au­thor­i­ty not­ed that ports across the re­gion have been fac­ing in­creased chal­lenges, in­clud­ing high­er car­go vol­umes, dis­rup­tions in glob­al ship­ping sched­ules, and de­lays in doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“These fac­tors have al­so af­fect­ed PPOS op­er­a­tions, con­tribut­ing to in­con­sis­tent ves­sel ar­rivals and oc­ca­sion­al in­ef­fi­cien­cies in car­go de­liv­ery.”

De­spite these pres­sures, the Port Au­thor­i­ty said it has im­ple­ment­ed a se­ries of proac­tive mea­sures aimed at min­imis­ing dis­rup­tion and main­tain­ing ser­vice qual­i­ty, which in­cludes en­hanced co­or­di­na­tion with ship­ping lines to im­prove ves­sel ar­rival pre­dictabil­i­ty, op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments to ex­pand yard ca­pac­i­ty and in­crease berth pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and col­lab­o­ra­tion with key agen­cies to stream­line doc­u­men­ta­tion and car­go clear­ance process­es.

The Au­thor­i­ty reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions and con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with all stake­hold­ers in the ship­ping and com­mer­cial sec­tors.