Exporters Western Cape (EWC) has indicated that it will make a strong appeal against a proposal for a state-owned national carrier when it appears before the Portfolio Committee on Transport (PCT) on Tuesday, 3 June.
Commenting on news that transport minister Barbara Creecy (*) was going ahead to seek shipping line collaboration in the matter, EWC chairperson Terry Gale said it was premature.
He pointed out that Section B12 of 2023 in the current iteration of the Merchant Shipping Bill, which will make provision for ‘cabotage’ – the practice of using one line to move imports and exports along a country’s coast – has not yet been approved.
In April it was announced that industry had until 25 June to object to the PCT why the Department of Transport should not proceed with cabotage as a means to generate additional revenue for the fiscus.
Speaking to Freight News on Monday after it appeared that someone had leaked Creecy’s comments about going ahead with cabotage plans anyway, Gale said: “Some’s jumping the gun here.
“It hasn’t been approved by the PCT.”
Although the motives for having own-flagged carrier transshipping goods along South Africa’s coast looks good on paper, the consensus among private-sector stakeholders is that it’s not a good idea.
For the most part it is feared that cabotage will result in another state-owned entity (SOE), provisionally called the SA Shipping Company (Sasco).
Should such an SOE be tasked with ocean freight movement between South Africa’s various ports, independently owned container lines will no longer be allowed to transship cargo.
Gale said it would cause double-handling at the country’s ports as cargo would have to be moved from one vessel to another, further constraining existing capacity shortfalls at various container terminals.
Earlier this year he pointed out that it would most likely result in multimodal overflows for the domestic road freight industry, because domestic cargo owners already doubted the ability of the country’s ports to distribute goods without unnecessary delay.
He said the required cost of launching a national shipping line should rather go towards “other things”.
“Let’s get our ports up and running and back to the status to which they should be.”
Gale said, given the country’s struggling economy, an own shipping line didn’t seem feasible.
“Where are we going to get the cargo to fill this new carrier?”
He reiterated that an opportunity to benefit from local shipping line Safmarine, sold to Maersk in 1999, had been squandered.
- Also read this: "DoT backs plan to launch new national shipping carrier."
