CHITTAGONG, Mar 16: The Customs Auction Shed of the Chittagong Port Authority will be commissioned within a month to help ease congestion.
The decision came at a meeting between shipping minister M Shajahan Khan and senior officials of the two government agencies in the city.
The meeting also decided to constitute a joint committee to settle the unresolved issues between the Chittagong Customs House and the Chittagong Port Authority while easing the cargo-handling activities for the smooth delivery of goods from the prime seaport.
The meeting was held on Thursday afternoon in the conference room of the Chittagong Port Authority.
Chairman of Chittagong Port Authority Zulfiquer Aziz, Commissioner of Chittagong Customs House Moniruzzaman and senior officials of the two agencies were present in the meeting, chaired by the minister.
The minister said that all goods of auction yard lying inside the port for a long will be shifted to the newly-constructed auction shed of the port within a month.
To clear the goods eligible for putting on auction, the port authority constructed the new shed on a five-acre land two years back.
Besides, the containers lying unclaimed inside the port yards for several years would be used as temporary abodes for the Rohingya people who have started fleeing Myanmar since last August and took shelter in Cox's Bazar.
The prime seaport has been facing severe space constraints and congestion of containers and cargoes for a long time as these containers for auction could not be removed to the port's new auction shed.
The meeting also decided to sell off the cars lying for more than five years in the port as scrap and decided to take steps as early as possible for the vehicles imported under the Carnet facilities.
The Customs House officials told the meeting that the sale proceeds from auction worth Tk 780 million would be allotted to the Chittagong Port Authority on behalf of Chittagong Customs House.
The meeting decided that the sale proceeds from the auctions in future would be shared by Chittagong Customs House and Chittagong Port Authority at 80:20 ratio meaning 80 per cent of the profit would be owned by the CCH and 20 per cent by the CPA.
Officials in the meeting said Chittagong Port currently handles over 2.5 million twenty-foot units of containers and nearly 80 million tonnes of bulk cargo a year.
But the Chittagong Port Authority lacks absolute authority to take the decision in case of delivery of the cargoes.
Although millions of containers arrive in the port and are unloaded from ships, the port cannot release a single container without Customs' clearance.
At the same time, the port authority cannot discharge containers or cargos from the jetties and deliver them to importers, hold auction of the leftover goods on schedule, thereby worsen congestion of containers and vessels in jetties and the outer anchorage.
Businesses alleged that some containers have gone missing from the port sheds. They said the Customs House had records of those containers but those were not found in the sheds.
It is learnt that the Customs House has written to the port authority with regard to the missing containers and formed a committee to investigate it.
All these issues came up for discussion in Thursday's meeting.
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