Port congestion clears in Chittagong

Container vessels coming to Bangladesh’s prime seaport are getting direct berthing to the jetties without waiting at the outer anchorage.

Sometimes a few vessels need to wait for a few hours for tide to get berthing due to drought requirements. Presently, in Chittagong port vessels with 9.5 meter water draft can take berth with tidal help.

On 12 August, only four container vessels were found to wait at the outer anchorage of the port. In particular, Hermann Schepers and Marine Taraba were waiting one day while Sabre Trader and SOL Delta were waiting a few hours.

Chittagong port officials say the waiting time of container vessels has now gone down to less than 24 hours or a maximum of one day, as an increased number of such ships are given berthing responding to shippers' calls.

The berthing delay for vessels went up to six to ten days last month which was linked to container stockpile at port yards, longer stay of vessels at jetties and priority berthing of Chittagong-Colombo vessels to clear export backlog.

Mohammed Abdullah Jahir, chief operating officer of Saif Maritime, said the port authority had been giving berthing of at least 12 container vessels at a time during the last couple of weeks which helped lower the vessels queue.

Besides, the provision of shifting all kinds of containers to the off docks has helped to free spaces at the port yard thus unloading and loading of boxes accelerated lowering the turnaround time of vessels, according to Jahir.

On 12 August, there were 35,419TEU at the port yard out of its total storage capacity of 49,018 TEU.

Source: Container News