Shabbir Mansha Churra, Convener of central standing committee on Customs of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI), who is also the Founder Chairman of Pakistan Artificial Leather Imports and Merchants Association (PALIMA), has strongly protested against the continuous delay tactics in grounding of containers for examination at Port Qasim by terminal operators and requested the Collector Customs to take notice and strictly issue the directives to the terminal operators to ground the imported containers as soon as possible so that importers can be saved from heavy financial losses in term of Demurrage & Detention Charges.
By drawing immediate attention towards the issue regarding delay in grounding of containers at terminal, he said we have been informed by our member’s association that traders are facing unnecessary delays in clearance of their consignments especially at KICTL & QICTL due to delay in grounding of containers marked for the examination.
“It has been observed that after a month or two, traders are facing backlog trouble at container terminals and nowadays a huge backlog of the containers is started which is increasing day by day and still there is a backlog of 6 to 9 days”, Mr. Mansha pointed out.
Shabbir Mansha further said that If the situation remains unresolved, there is no doubt that the terminal will be choked due to this reason the trade is affecting very badly and is also bearing heavy financial losses in shape of container detention charged by the shipping companies, which is an average of US$ 80 to US$100 of a day per container.
Convener FPCCI added that on the other hand the commercial importer local and manufacturers are unable to fulfill their market commitment due to increase in customs clearance time of imported goods including raw material, which ultimately creates a gap in demand and supply and is also increasing the cost of doing business.
Shabbir Churra requested to Collector of Customs (A-South) to look into this matter on priority basis and immediate action may kindly be taken in order to make necessary arrangements for timely grounding of containers and till the clearance of all backlog the terminal operators should compensate the amount of shipping container rent which is no doubt occurring due to fault of terminal.
