Congestion has spread from the Chittagong Port's jetties, yards and outer anchorage to inland container depots (ICDs).
The port city's 19 ICDs now hold more than 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of export boxes, nearly double the usual storage of about 8,000 TEUs.
At the same time, the depots are also storing some 42,000 TEUs of empty containers and about 8,500 TEUs of import cargo.
"But since the export volume has been consistently increasing for the last one week, it is putting strain on our storage capacity…," the Bangladesh Inland Container Depots Association (BICDA) told port sector stakeholders on Monday.
According to BICDA, the stock of export containers in the ICDs rose by more than 2,350 TEUs in a week.
Ruhul Amin Sikder (Biplob), BICDA secretary general, told The Financial Express on Monday that ships were taking much longer to turn around, so fewer vessels were leaving each day.
As a result, he said, fewer export containers could be shipped in the past couple of days, leading to a build-up at the depots.
Mr Biplob said the depots could send only 1,395 TEUs of export containers in the 24 hours to Monday morning, down from 1,729 TEUs the previous day. Usually, the depots ship more than 2,200 TEUs of export containers a day.
He said only four container vessels would sail from Chittagong port on Tuesday. If six had left, they could have carried more containers, easing congestion at the depots.
On Monday, more than 44,000 TEU containers were lying at the Chittagong port yards. And, the port authority's berthing report showed 18 container ships waiting at the outer anchorage on that day.
Of them, 12 were gearless and six were geared vessels. Some gearless vessels had been waiting up to six days. About 10 ships were loading and unloading containers at the port's jetties on the day.
Enamul Karim, director (traffic) of the Chittagong Port Authority, told The Financial Express that ships now take up to 72 hours to turn around at the port's jetties, compared with 48 to 60 hours a few months ago.
He said the number of containers at the jetties would not increase further as the stock of Bangladesh-bound cargo at Colombo and Singapore ports had decreased.
Mr Karim said the surge in container ships at the outer anchorage was due to seven-day berthing delays at Singapore and Colombo ports, leading to a backlog of Bangladesh-bound imports.
The CPA granted permission to some 18 vessels on a temporary basis to carry the stranded cargo, creating a long queue at the outer anchorage, he said.
On slow delivery from the port yards, he said importers were struggling to withdraw money from banks to pay customs duty and other costs. "So fewer containers are being delivered from the yard these days."
"The congestion at the port yard and the number of vessels at the outer anchorage would ease within a month," he hoped.
BICDA's Mr Biplob believes allowing depots to handle more than the current 38 types of import containers could help reduce congestion at the port yards.
He said depots were permitted to handle additional import containers during the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped to clear containers from the port.
syful-islam@outlook.com