SA shippers subsidise foreign cargo owners

SA cargo owners are subsidising foreign cargo owners and liners transhipping through our ports, according to this year’s SA Ports Regulator’s global port pricing comparator study (GPPCS). It’s no new argument, having been a bitter bone of contention in the SA freight industry and amongst local shippers for many years. It has been blamed for the often serious congestion at container stacks at the Port of Durban, for example. But, despite continual highlevel lobbying by the likes of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff) and the SA Shippers’ Council (SASC), the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) has proved unyielding in its refusal to restrict what has always been a tidy money earner. It has led local container shippers to accuse the authority of persisting in its traditional error of seeing the shipping lines as its main customers – when it is, in fact, SA cargo owners who keep the ports in business. Meanwhile, the Durban problem has been changed somewhat, with the TNPA having encouraged a move of transhipments to the deepsea port of Ngqura while the berth strengthening and deepening project is carried out at the port. But the freight industry complainants are not appeased, concerned that the problem will be resurrected when the project is completed and the Port of Durban once again gets up to speed. The problem arises, said the regulator’s study, from the fact that containers are significantly more expensive than the global average, unless you are a foreign cargo owner transhipping through an SA port where the cargo dues faced by a full transhipped container are well below the global average. SA container cargo owners, it added, carry the greatest burden of infrastructure costs, while also paying greater premiums over global averages than foreign transhipment cargo owners. “All vessels face much lower overall costs in SA ports than the averages in the study, ranging from 26% below the global norm in the case of containers and 57% for iron ore vessels,” said the CPPCS. “This must be seen in a context where all vessels are foreign-owned and operated. “The incidence of the tariff clearly indicates that foreign users of the ports are not contributing to the overall infrastructure costs in a similar manner to what they do in the global average.” CAPTION The Port of Ngqura … TNPA has encouraged a move of transhipments to Ngqura while Durban upgrades are under way.