‘Appoint Port Czar to end congestion’

MANILA, Philippines–A group of importers, exporters, brokers and other private stakeholders at the Port of Manila has urged the government to appoint a “Port Czar” to oversee efforts to decongest the port area.

This was among the suggestions posed by the Port Users’ Confederation (PUC) to solve the problem once and for all.

Noemi Saludo, PUC chair emeritus, noted that while the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has assigned officials to oversee the day-to-day operations at the Port of Manila, there was no one tasked with decongesting it.

“We need a port czar because, as we can see, the present management of the PPA is busy with the management of the ports. But they are limited in handling port congestion,” Saludo said at the sidelines of the first Port Summit held by the group in Manila on Monday.

“When people think of port congestion, they blame the truck ban which is also blamed for the gridlock major roads have experienced recently. But port congestion is more than that. We have to look at what’s happening inside,” she added.

The appointment of a port czar was just one of the dozens of recommendations threshed out in the daylong summit also attended by officials from the transportation department and customs bureau and private entities such as Asian Terminals Inc. and International Container Terminal Services Inc. and various trade groups doing business at the port.

The recommendations focused on six key areas of port management: customs procedures and reforms, traffic management, port development, antismuggling initiatives, international shipping regulation and cargo terminal handling.

Saludo said that while the truck ban had clearly eased port congestion in addition to the efforts of the Cabinet Cluster on Port Congestion, there were still a lot of problems which needed to be addressed.

“What we see as the two major problems that could still significantly decongest the port if solved are: first, the Bureau of Customs’ (BOC) practices and how they can be more business-friendly, and second, empty containers,” she added.

Traders and businesses have particularly complained about the BOC’s lengthy investigation of suspicious freight containers.

“There was one trader whose shipment of wine was put on alert by the BOC this year. By the time he was cleared to take out the cargo, you couldn’t drink the wine anymore because it was already sour,” Saludo said.

Another problem hobbling efforts to decongest the Port of Manila was the issue of empty containers, she added.

According to her, the Customs and Tariffs Code which allows empty containers to stay inside the port for 150 days or five months does not help.

“The law should be amended to trim this grace period to about 30 or 60 days,” she said.

All of the recommendations gained from the whole-day summit will be presented to the Cabinet Cluster on Port Congestion in a meeting on Nov. 27.

“We are 100 percent confident that the Cabinet will look into this and make some changes,” Saludo said.