CHITTAGONG, June 15: A meeting of the relevant stakeholders on a proposal to increase the charges of Chittagong port ended here without any decision recently.
The meeting with participation of representatives from about 28 government and private organisations, including Chittagong Port, was held at the meeting room of the Ministry of Shipping on June 2 last.
Adviser to the Ministry of Shipping Brigadier General (Retd.) M Sakhawat Hossain presided over the meeting.
According to sources, the participants discussed the issue of increase in tariffs of Chittagong port. But, a large section of the stakeholders opposed the proposal of the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) for increasing the tariffs.
Chittagong Port has been operating at the same old tariffs for almost four decades.
Operations of Chittagong Port are being carried out by collecting tariffs for about 50 types of services using the tariffs set in 1986.
But this old tariff structure is not compatible with current demand and costs.
Therefore, the high-level meeting was held at the ministry on June 2 last to determine the new tariffs, said the sources in CPA.
The Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association mentioned that the new tariff proposal has increased the rates of several important fees, including port entry fees, pilotage charges, loading and unloading charges, from almost half to more than double.
Besides, in a letter to the port protesting the tariff increase, the Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association stated that the CPA is currently operating within a monopoly market, where the port's facilities, infrastructure, efficiency, and international standard services are still far behind.
The increase in tariffs is not reasonable and will reduce the country's competitiveness in the logistics and trade sectors.
The organisation fears that traders will face a crisis with this new rate, especially since Bangladesh's port service charges are already much higher than other ports in South Asia, said the leaders of Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association.
Bangladesh, where basic physical infrastructure, including port modernisation, is still at a stage of extensive development, increasing tariffs to follow international standards is not business-friendly. It will make the business environment more difficult and have a negative impact on the country's economy, the stakeholders opined at the meeting.
It may be mentioned that the meeting was arranged to exchange views with these major stakeholders of Chittagong port.
Earlier, an initiative to re-fix the port tariffs was taken in 2013.
However, it was postponed due to the government's unwillingness at that time. Later, this process started again in 2019. So, in 2022, Spain-based consulting firm M/s Idom Consulting, Engineering and Architecture Limited and Bangladesh's Logicforum Limited were appointed to review the tariff structure and prepare new proposals.
The consulting firm has proposed a comprehensive tariff, taking into account the issues of updating the tariff structure, determining fair and competitive tariffs for users, and ensuring the port's revenue and service quality improvement in the meeting. But, the stakeholders denied to accept it. As a result, the meeting ended without any decision to increase the Chittagong port tariffs.
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