Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo says there is need for a re­view and ad­just­ment of the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion (CES) fees at T&T’s ports of en­try.

“Fees for the ex­am­i­na­tion of con­tain­ers—cur­rent­ly $375 for 20-foot con­tain­ers and $525 for 40-foot con­tain­ers—have re­mained un­changed for the past 25 years since in­cep­tion,” he not­ed dur­ing Fri­day’s sit­ting of the Sen­ate.

With in­fla­tion, in­creased op­er­a­tional costs, and the evolv­ing lo­gis­tics in­dus­try, he said the fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives are rec­om­mend­ed:

• Re­view of the ex­ist­ing fee struc­ture to en­sure align­ment with cur­rent costs and in­dus­try stan­dards

• In­tro­duc­tion of a fee for ex­am­i­na­tion of 45-foot con­tain­ers, which are be­com­ing more com­mon in in­ter­na­tion­al trade

• Re­nam­ing the “CES” Fee to that of “Con­tain­er Pro­cess­ing Fee” to ac­cu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the pur­pose.

Tan­coo said the use of 45-foot con­tain­ers is be­com­ing more com­mon as in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping prac­tices evolve.

“While these larg­er con­tain­ers pro­vide ef­fi­cien­cy ad­van­tages for ship­ping com­pa­nies, they re­quire more time, labour, and re­sources to in­spect, and there­fore, should be sub­ject to a fee struc­ture,” he said.

“The cost of main­tain­ing the CES in­fra­struc­ture, tech­nol­o­gy up­grades, and staffing has in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past decades due to in­fla­tion and eco­nom­ic fac­tors. These fac­tors ne­ces­si­tate a re­view and po­ten­tial in­crease in the fees to cov­er costs.”

He added, “Many glob­al ship­ping hubs have reg­u­lar­ly re­viewed their in­spec­tion/con­tain­er han­dling fees to keep up with in­dus­try de­vel­op­ments and in­fla­tion. T&T must en­sure its fees re­main com­pet­i­tive while al­so re­flect­ing op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ties.”