Business leaders of the country on Saturday expressed mixed reaction to a study report that put Chittagong port at the top of 69 ports of 17 Asian countries in terms of efficiency, with the majority of them terming the report lopsided.
Most of them think the port is still suffering from a range of serious flaws including inadequate number of equipment and manpower, corruption in management, inefficient transportation, and high cost of using its facilities. They also said the facilities offered by the port were inadequate for the local businesses, although there was enough scope for making it a port of international standard.
The report titled Benchmarking the Efficiency of Asian container Ports, run by the African Journal of Business Management on February 14 and followed up by a number of Bangladesh news media in the past two days, focused only on the container handling in Chittagong port, ignoring the service standard, said most of the business leaders.
Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry former president Mir Nasir Hossin said ranking the Chittagong port first among 12 'super efficient ports' in the 17 countries by the report was totally 'one-sided'.
He said, 'The cost of using the port facilities, the turnaround time of shipment, and other factors have not been considered in the report. The report is mainly focused on the existing capacity of container handling of the port and the total number of containers handled by it, where the quality of service and the cost of using the port facilities are not mentioned.'
According to Mir Nasir, in terms of capacity, area, service, cost, and efficiency, most of the other Asian ports are better than Chittagong.
He said, 'If we see the existing scenario of Chittagong port, it is clear that the quality of service has not increased much in recent years, the cost of using port facilities is still very high, and the turnaround time is approximately five to six days,'
Inefficient management of the port is forcing the businesses to pay extra charges, he alleged. 'To make the Chittagong port more efficient, the government should ensure a corruption-free management of the port and efficient transportation of containers,' he added.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers' and Exporters' Association former president Fazlul Haque said the actual situation of the port was not identified in the study.
The port is operating with limited resources which are not enough to handle the volume of trade, which is rising by the day, he said.
'The government should increase the logistics of the port as well as its efficiency of delivering the services,' he added.
FBCCI president AK Azad, however, said, 'The recognition is a sign of the improvements made by the port and it needs more attention to make it even more efficient.'
He said the government was very much active to develop the port and increase the volume of regional trade through it.
The chief of the country's apex trade body said, 'At present, the situation of Chittagong port is satisfactory and we urge the government to ensure effective operations of the port for reducing the cost of using its facilities.'
'If the government improves the service-delivery capacity and management of Chittagong port, it can become a regional hub of connectivity, which will benefit the local businesses too,' he added.
Exporters' Association of Bangladesh president Abdus Salam Murshedy said the situation of Chittagong port was really alarming in 2009 and 2010, when the export-oriented garment factory owners had suffered a lot. It was a time when they had to go for air shipment, spending a huge amount of extra money, to ensure delivery of goods in time, due to mismanagement at Chittagong port, he mentioned.
Murshedy said, 'The main problem of the port is "process loss" due to mismanagement and limited logistics. Businesses frequently face trouble in making shipment due to malfunctioning machines and other equipments.'
'But,' in his opinion, 'the port is now relatively better managed with defence personnel in charge.'
Source : New Age
