Extend detention free time, limit container deposit, carriers requested

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2020

ID-100259836The Aduana Business Club, Inc. (ABCI) and Chamber of Customs Brokers, Inc. (CCBI) are requesting international shipping lines to extend the detention free time for containers from the average 72 hours to at least 14 days due to the lack of container depots on which to store them.

The request was one of the issues discussed by a committee composed of representatives of ABCI, CCBI and Association of International Shipping Lines (AISL) in their first meeting recently. The committee was formed following a dialogue last month among the associations aimed at resolving various industry concerns.

The extension is being sought in consideration of port users’ difficulties in returning empty containers amid the truck ban and port congestion.

 

Container deposits

ABCI and CCBI are also asking carriers to “limit the amount” of container deposits and expedite container deposit refund.

One broker complained that at one point his deductions for container deposits reached P60 million and how, during the height of port congestion, one shipping line alone deducted P11 million from his deposit.

Samson Gabisan, executive vice president of CCBI and director of ABCI, said some Cebu-based brokers get their container deposit refunds only after three months of return of containers. He said checks are first issued in Manila before being transmitted to Cebu, partly delaying the process.

Among all foreign liners operating in the Philippines, ABCI and CCBI noted only one carrier promptly refunds container deposits upon submission of required documents.

Shipping lines were also asked to streamline their procedures. ABCI and CCBI claimed it used to be that customs brokers could process transactions for two shipping lines within a day; now it takes the whole day to process transactions for just one carrier.

The groups also requested that the cash deposit for one-day demurrage be charged at the terminal or deducted automatically from the brokers’ container deposit “to avoid delay in the release of trucks from the yard.”

Noting that other groups have aired the same concerns, Atty Maximino Cruz, AISL general manager of the liner association, said he will relay the requests to the 41 members of AISL.

But in the end, he reminded the groups that any decision would still be up to the individual liner.

After the meeting, he told PortCalls the European Union competition law prohibits foreign shipping lines from deciding as a group on matters such as charges.

He noted it is possible for individual shipping lines to extend the detention free time, and that some are already doing so upon the request of their clients.

As for the call for shipping lines to have their own container depots, Cruz said this is not the core business of liners. But he said that in two or three months’ time, new container depots will have been put up, pointing to the trend now to open more yards near users’ locations, like what the Philippine Economic Zone Authority is doing in its ecozones.

AISL president Patrick Ronas earlier said the association has always advocated the opening of more container yards. – Roumina Pablo

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