Infrastructure levy could help
THE SHIPPING industry is not surprised at the ego-busting news that a Harvard University report placed the SA port authorities (Portnet) fifth in an African efficiency league, according to members of the shipper and shipping industries. First in the rankings was Namport, followed by Egypt, Tunisia, and fourth Senegal. Even the fact that Senegal pipped SA into fourth spot hardly caused a stir.
With the study based on comparative port costs and efficiency - SA's harbour authorities lose on both accounts, according to FTW's commentators.
But, they added, the forthcoming service agreements with the shipping lines, and eventual privatisation - titled concessioning, according to Portnet senior management - should lead to future productivity improvement.
Indeed, the prelude to the service agreements - where missing promised target levels will lead to Portnet penalty pay-outs - might already have triggered steps in this direction.
Portnet's c.e.o. for the port operations division (POD), Tau Morwe, has launched an efficiency and productivity drive in a determined effort to improve profits and service. And, he told FTW, if the productivity programme bears fruit, customers could see tariffs going down or remaining where they are (See page 17).
That would please Peter Odendaal, operations manager of P&O Nedlloyd.
A fifth place in the African league for 2000 is a long way from what things used to be, he told FTW.
However, he added, Portnet, as well as Customs, realise that things are below par. And the efforts to improve productivity are a positive step.
A good measuring gauge will be the service level agreements - keenly awaited by the lines.
Although it's not finalised, he added, it's a move in the right direction.
That's how Anton de Marillac of Green Africa Shipping also sees it.
Portnet will obviously have to better its productivity if it agrees to pay penalties for non-compliance.
The fact that Portnet is also now taking on outsiders to help out - as in the Durban container terminal - can only help towards improvement, reckons Odendaal.
That's a feeling that Paul Clarke, seafreight export manager for Stemcor, also shares - although not necessarily just with relation to the current outsiders (from P&O Ports).
As I have said ad nauseam, he told FTW, there's nothing wrong with Portnet - it's just the people who run it.
If my suggestion (made over a year ago) - that we as an industry should stop pointing fingers and get in there and help, with staff seconded for a couple of years to key departments - had been accepted, we would not have the situation we have today.
But the problem of SA's poor harbour rating goes deeper than this, according to Nolene Lossau, executive director of the SA Shippers Council.
Forgetting the obvious problem of poor productivity, she told FTW, there's another factor. The same word used by other commentators - cost.
And not just operational cost - but that shipper's expletive ad valorem wharfage.
It would be lovely to see SA at the top of the heap, said Lossau. I can't see why we shouldn't be up there if the wharfage was removed - something which just pushes us right out of the cost-efficiency league.
Odendaal agrees. It's the biggest overriding factor, he said. 'And, if the funds had been used for the original purpose (harbour maintenance and development) we wouldn't have had crises like the cargo boom, and congestion, of 1995.
For port operations, there are the charges for services - but no excess for the now critical port repair and development.
What has been agreed realistically, said one FTW source, is that Portnet is likely to introduce an infrastructure levy. But only for a time, to catch up with the underfunding of the past.
This is acceptable to the shippers, according to Lossau. As long as it's dedicated, she said, we're not worried.
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