Shipping stakeholders in Sri Lanka have hit back at claims carriers are avoiding the port of Colombo over the country\u2019s political and economic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Rohan Masakorala, CEO of Shippers\u2019 Academy Colombo, the South Asian transhipment hub did suffer some operational disruption last month, but it was short lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s all a bit of a cooked-up story,\u201d he told The Loadstar<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere were a couple of days where the [inter-terminal] truck drivers couldn\u2019t get to the port to work, because of some disruption to the local transport network, but it was rectified very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was also a 30-hour stoppage at the port on 9 May when trade unions joined the protests in Colombo, leading to \u201cabout 10\u201d container vessels being diverted to India \u201cbecause they didn\u2019t want to wait,\u201d Mr Masakorala explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean the carriers wrote off the port of Colombo as a future shipping link or something. They were temporary diversions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome local criticism of the situation was amplified by various parties in the region who are competing with us, which resulted in unverified negative news being published by international media.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, he said the May work stoppage was over quickly, and the terminals are currently operating efficiently with no berthing issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has been backed up by the port\u2019s terminal operators and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, who recently issued a statement saying it was \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d at Colombo. Total volumes between January-April grew 4.3% year-on-year to 100,356 teu, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colombo is also handling larger vessels, Mr Masakorala noted, therefore the total number of vessels calling has reduced, but the transhipment volumes are still growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, he said, Sri Lanka is suffering a deep economic crisis caused by the government\u2019s economic mismanagement and subsequent depletion of foreign exchange reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, local shipping agents claimed carriers could stop calling Colombo because of the shortage of dollars in the banking system and \u201c$70m in unpaid freight charges\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat is absolutely false,\u201d Mr Masakorala said. \u201cShipping lines have made no such statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost exporters are already paying in dollars. For example, 50% of Sri Lanka\u2019s exports are garments, and those orders are shipped on FCA [free carrier] terms where the US and European buyers pay for the freight in dollars. Another large percentage is transhipment cargo for foreign ship owners, which is also paid in dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo almost 95% of Colombo freight is today paid in dollars \u2013 there is no forex \u2018crunch\u2019 for freight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd obviously shipping lines are not going to deny the supply chains of major customers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Les acteurs du transport maritime au Sri Lanka ont r\u00e9pondu aux all\u00e9gations selon lesquelles les transporteurs \u00e9vitent le port de Colombo en raison de la crise politique et \u00e9conomique qui s\u00e9vit dans le pays. Selon Rohan Masakorala, PDG de la Shippers' Academy Colombo, le centre de transbordement d'Asie du Sud a subi quelques perturbations op\u00e9rationnelles le mois dernier,<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_mbp_gutenberg_autopost":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/ColomboHarbour-November2015-01-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3961,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions\/3961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.primefreight.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}