SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Car­go com­ing in­to T&T is be­ing af­fect­ed by the on­go­ing drought in the Pana­ma Canal.

And im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Hay­den Al­leyne is now rais­ing a con­cern over the is­sue.

Al­leyne, a ship­ping con­sul­tant, said the Pana­ma Canal was cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a back­log of ves­sels due to shrink­ing wa­ter lev­els.

More than 200 ships car­ry­ing goods have been stuck on ei­ther side of the canal for weeks, caus­ing a de­lay in the ar­rival of car­go in T&T, he told Guardian Me­dia.

Al­leyne said that the drought has been af­fect­ing com­pa­nies lo­cal­ly, as some have not been re­ceiv­ing sup­plies in a time­ly fash­ion.

“They (Gov­ern­ment) have to start by recog­nis­ing that the prob­lem is there. I haven’t heard any of them come out and say this is a prob­lem. They are aware of the chal­lenges,” Al­leyne said.

He ap­pealed to the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and mar­itime tech­nocrats to ur­gent­ly come up with a plan to deal with the is­sue.

Asked if the as­so­ci­a­tion had any plan of its own, Al­leyne said there was no easy fix to this dilem­ma.

“It’s a drought in a coun­try. Can we con­trol the weath­er? Can we have a plan for that? No! We don’t know.”

How­ev­er, Al­leyne said, the as­so­ci­a­tion was cre­at­ing cli­mate change aware­ness, ed­u­cat­ing the mass­es and adopt­ing poli­cies.

“That is the best that we can do for the short-term,” he said.

T&T, he said, need­ed long-term so­lu­tions which would re­quire putting every­one’s heads to­geth­er to de­vise a work­able so­lu­tion.

“It’s a cri­sis that has hit the re­gion. It’s all about ed­u­ca­tion and bring­ing to­geth­er your best minds to come up with so­lu­tions. This is­sue has to be dis­cussed ur­gent­ly.”

In ear­ly Au­gust, the Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty capped the dai­ly tran­sits across the canal to 31 ves­sels, down from an av­er­age of 36.

Rain­fall is key to re­plen­ish­ing and op­er­at­ing the wa­ter­way, but the drought has been on­go­ing.

Most of these ves­sels ex­it Chi­na car­ry­ing con­sumer goods in freight con­tain­ers.

Re­cent re­stric­tions on the canal were forc­ing many com­pa­nies to trans­port few­er items on ships which could po­ten­tial­ly lead to emp­ti­er shelves and high­er prices in stores.

The Pana­ma Canal is a con­struct­ed wa­ter­way that con­nects the At­lantic and the Pa­cif­ic oceans across the Isth­mus of Pana­ma.

Food not af­fect­ed

Food sup­plies, Al­leyne said, were not ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

“Food, not re­al­ly. More so re­tail items. Most of our food comes from the re­gion and the US, Latin Amer­i­ca and South Amer­i­ca.”

Goods that would nor­mal­ly take four weeks to ar­rive at our shores have been tak­ing three months to get here.

“Yes. We do bring a sig­nif­i­cant amount of car­go through the Pana­ma Canal, so it will af­fect the de­liv­ery time and the freight cost of some goods com­ing to Trinidad. Now, it will be ex­as­per­at­ing be­cause we are in our peak pe­ri­od ... typ­i­cal­ly the few months com­ing in­to Christ­mas. Some of the Car­ni­val bands bring­ing in stuff out of Chi­na, now is their go-to time for ship­ping stuff, so you are see­ing some ef­fects there. Some mas bands have in­di­cat­ed that it is a chal­lenge, and they are try­ing to re­solve that by or­der­ing much ear­li­er than they nor­mal­ly do and look­ing at air freight so­lu­tions.”

He said de­lays have al­so been at­trib­uted to oth­er is­sues such as ad­di­tion­al costs. Some con­signees, Al­leyne said, had been pay­ing ex­tra for their goods to be giv­en pri­or­i­ty to cross the canal, while weight re­stric­tions had al­so been im­posed on large ves­sels.

The ex­tra costs could trans­late in­to an in­crease in the over­all price of goods.

Asked what could be the worst-case sce­nario if the drought per­sist­ed, Al­leyne said on the Pana­ma Canal side, “se­ri­ous ques­tions were be­ing asked”.

A few years ago, he said, the canal was ex­pand­ed to ac­com­mo­date larg­er ships.

“The dis­cus­sion they are hav­ing now is that the Pana­ma Canal is dy­ing.”

Cur­rent­ly, Al­leyne said, pol­i­cy­mak­ers were look­ing for so­lu­tions to build new trib­u­taries and man-made lakes to feed wa­ter in­to the canal.

“What that means for us is a ma­jor relook at trade lanes and meth­ods of get­ting car­go to the re­gion. It’s an is­sue that is on our agen­da.”

This week­end, Al­leyne said, the as­so­ci­a­tion will raise their con­cerns about the drought, cli­mate change and pol­lu­tion at a con­fer­ence be­ing host­ed in Port-of-Spain.

“The plan is to have adap­tive so­lu­tions to these chal­lenges. We have to take it se­ri­ous­ly.”

No de­lays for Car­ni­val–Ayen

T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mark Ayen said his as­so­ci­a­tion had not re­ceived any re­ports from its 300 mem­bers of de­lays of Car­ni­val ma­te­ri­als for next next Feb­ru­ary’s Car­ni­val.

Ayen said he had been urg­ing mem­bers to utilise lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured items for their cos­tumes but said he ex­pect­ed any back­log of Car­ni­val ma­te­ri­als to arise among large band­lead­ers in the com­ing weeks if it oc­curred at all.

“It may pose a prob­lem for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son es­pe­cial­ly as it is short.”

He promised to en­gage the trade and tourism min­istries on this mat­ter “to see how we could as­sist”.

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Roger Roach said he too, had re­ceived no com­plaints from mem­bers.

But Roach said if the wa­ter lev­els in the canal con­tin­ued to drop, he could fore­see prob­lems for T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“Pana­ma is a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point for Trinidad. So, if there are de­lays in Pana­ma it would af­fect us.”

Al­so con­tact­ed, Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket CEO Ku­mar Ma­haraj con­firmed there was a se­ri­ous back­up of goods.

“It’s tak­ing so long to get to Trinidad, and when the goods do come through, it’s com­ing close to one month be­fore the ex­piry date. The goods hard­ly have any shelf life,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj said with Di­vali around the cor­ner, they had or­dered 12 con­tain­ers of ghee but so far had on­ly re­ceived one of them.

He al­so dis­closed that some sup­pli­ers have been cut­ting back on the or­ders of cer­tain prod­ucts.

“They are re­strict­ing us,” he said.