Importers complain of uncertainty at port
JAKARTA (JP): Importers yesterday complained about increased costs and uncertainty at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port following a critical container pile-up there since late April.
They complained, at a meeting with Minister of Transportations Haryanto Dhanutirto, that their containers were often moved arbitrarily by customs and port officials to private storage depots, resulting in high additional costs.
"Well, it's not only a problem of increasing costs, but of responsibility. Where's Pelindo's responsibility?" said importer A. Syarif, referring to PT Pelindo II which manages the port.
Since late April, when the yard occupancy rate at Tanjung Priok port reached a critical 97 percent, the authorities have been removing many containers a day to private depots to reduce the pile-up.
"The problem, though, is that importers are required to pay more than Rp 500,000 (US$205) per 20-foot equivalent (TEU) per day," Syarif said.
On top of that, importers also have to bear the trucking costs from Tanjung Priok to the private terminals.
Syarif said that if goods for some reason had to be transferred elsewhere within six days after unloading, the cost of the transfer and the private depot's storage fee should be Pelindo's responsibility.
Another importer, Budiman, said the arbitrary transfer of containers from the port's customs area to private terminals often made it extremely difficult for importers to find their consignments.
Often importers could not clear their goods from the port, although they had secured clearance orders from the customs office, because the port's officials could not find their containers, he said.
"Once, we found the wanted containers in Tanjung Priok's container yard. But we could not take them out simply because the port authority had issued an order to transfer them to a private terminal," Budiman said.
Haryanto said in response, that the government should expedite the movement of containers from Tanjung Priok to private terminals to avoid congestion.
"But we also urge the customs service to reduce the amount of imports going through the red lane (subject to physical inspection) to a maximum 10 percent," he said.
But Haryanto also blamed importers for the container pile-up. He said importers often deliberately delayed picking up their containers from Tanjung Priok's container yards because they did not have to pay storage fees for the first six days after unloading.
Citing data from Pelindo II, Haryanto said that in May, 60,000 TEUs were unloaded. Fifty-eight thousand TEUs were cleared by the customs office but only 32,000 were picked up by their importers.
Most goods were picked up by their owners on the sixth day after unloading, the minister said.
He said the government was considering cutting the length of time importers could store their consignments free of charge at the port from six days to four days.
But importers said yesterday they would not be able to complete processing all the documents for the clearance of their imports within four days.
"We might be able pick up goods within four days as stated by Minister Haryanto if all parties were connected by the electronic data interchange," Mudrik, an importer, said. (rid)