CONTAINER CARGO HANDLING : Colombo Port grabbing slice of Singapore’s business: expert

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe
Capacity expansions at the Colombo Port will help it to capture a part of the container cargo market business of the world’s second largest container port in Singapore, according to an industry expert who was speaking at the Annual General Meeting of Sri Lanka Shippers’ Council recently. 

“This year up to last month, we had a 6 percent growth; while the Port of Singapore up to last month had a 2.5 percent drop in volume. So we have got new business coming in,” Colombo International Container Terminals Ltd (CICT) Commercial & Marketing General Manager Tissa Wickramasinghe said.

He noted that this was due to Sri Lanka having additional capacity, and being able to handle the ‘ultra large carriers’ which global shipping lines are opting to construct and operate now.

Singapore port, in 2014, handled 33.87 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units). Wickramasinghe said that Sri Lanka handled 4.83 million TEUs in 2014.
He noted that of the total, only 26 percent was domestic import/export cargo, with the rest being transhipment cargo, a situation which must be changed.

“You have 4 years of average growth of 4 percent.  From 2014, domestic grew by 9 percent and transhipment grew by 15 percent,” he said, commenting on the TEU performances in the recent years. According to him, the growth was due to additional capacity coming online by the way of CICT in April 2014, and ships which were earlier diverted to other ports are now staying in Colombo.

“The 2014 growth is a very good signal to say; if we have capacity, if we can meet the current trend of servicing ultra large carriers, if we have international standard service delivery and if we have a competitive tariff, we’re in business,” Wickremasinghe said.

He further noted that regional feeder ports which used to send their transhipment cargo to Port Klang in Malaysia or to Singapore are now sending containers directly to Colombo. “Earlier, Chittagong sent their feeder lines to Singapore or Klang, where the main lines took them on, then came to Colombo, then went to Africa or Europe. Now, just by increasing capacity, the volume of trade between Colombo and Chittagong grew by 44 percent in 2014 to 363,127 TEUs,” he said.

Therefore, he noted that both feeder lines and main lines would save on costs.

Wickramasinghe praised consecutive past governments for recognizing the geographical advantage of Sri Lanka and consistently investing in developing Colombo Port instead of letting it become a feeder port like Chittagong.

“I appreciate the undertakings of successive past governments, which future governments should follow,” he said.