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(Reproduced from the Daily Mirror – August 20, 2001) Despite leading ports such as Singapore and Hong Kong having suffered lower volumes, the Colombo Port, despite crisis time, had been a star performer; posting 6% throughput increase and 9% rise in transhipment upto July. During the first seven months, Colombo Port’s throughput amounted to 1.07 million TEUs, up by 6% and transhipment amounted to 747,483 TEUs, higher by 9% over the corresponding period of last year. Even though August has so far been a disaster for the Colombo Port owing to the prohibitive war risk premia and lines bypassing and the cancellation of services, analysts believe positive news from London should augur well for South Asia’s hub port. “If the situation returns to normal within a week or so, Colombo Port could bounce back and cover up for lost ground from September onwards. In such a scenario, Colombo Port should post an all time high throughput figure for 2001,” they added. In fact in July, Colombo Port handled its highest ever monthly throughput volume of 169,682 beating the previous record of 163,000 in March this year. The star performance is despite the world’s biggest line, Maersk-Sealand scaling down its services in Colombo a few years ago. Whilst higher volumes of Zim Gold Star and Evergreen-Unilgory have compensated, analysts said that Maersk-Sealand pulling out of Singapore to Malaysia’s Tanjun Pelpas Port had also benefited Colombo on transhipment traffic. Despite optimism from some analysts, others were cautious in projecting a record throughput for Colombo in 2001. This is because Evergreen-Unilgory has suspended a large number of services temporarily until the war risk premia crisis is resolved by the Sri Lankan Government. However these analysts were also of the view that if the crisis is resolved these lines who have pulled out or were bypassing, would come back. Furthermore, global recession would reduce export boxes while domestic pressure may also lead to lower import containers as well. Already exports have declined by 1.5% during this year’s first half while imports had dipped by 16%. They also said that star performance should not discourage the Government from going ahead with reforms in the Port. Trade unions for vested reasons scuttled management plans to introduce a new shift system to boost efficiency, and productivity as well as eventual worker welfare. Due to other problems, Government succumbed to trade union pressure but analysts said that it is in the larger interest of the nation, port and workers that the new shift should be re-introduced if Colombo were to survive competition from regional ports that are also fast expanding to meet the growing demand from Indian exporters and importers. (NC)
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