Ports maintain secrecy over average vessel delays

ALAN PEAT ALONG WITH the good news that the contentious congestion surcharge has gone, is the bad news that nobody will go public with figures on the average ship delays in Durban – the measure that the shipping line conferences use to decide on whether or not to re-implement the surcharge. The port authorities still won’t release the previous daily breakdown of shipping figures that the shipping world and its observers used to gauge the conditions in the port. Something they don’t want made public, FTW was told, because it gives overseas readers a bad impression of SA port conditions. The conferences, and their local associates, are as always utterly resistant to revealing any of their business – even where it directly affects the whole SA shipper market. FTW has again battled to make sense of the port conditions at Durban – which have had such a major impact on SA trading costs – and we have been met only with closed lips on a matter which is of such vital importance to the local shipper/importer community.