Bangladesh's external trade is likely to face a slump in the current fiscal year to June 2011 due to poor performance of the country's main Chittagong port, traders said on Sunday. "Both the exports and imports are bound to fall as the efficiency of the port has fallen considerably," M. A. Latif, president of Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry told reporters.
The performance of the port started to decline in May after the authorities did not renew contracts for private berth operators following litigation.
The port authority, which since that month has started operating berths itself, will reappoint new private berth operators after the court settles the litigation, a senior port official said.
But courts often take a long time to reach a final decision, traders said.
The slow operations resulted in a serious congestion at the port raising the turn-around time for ships to some seven days from the previous one-and-half-days on average, port users said.
The garment sector has faced a backlog of exports worth 9.0 billion taka ($129 million) in the last four months, said Nasiruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. Garment exports constitute some 80 percent of the country's nearly $17 billion annual export earnings.
Traders in the import-based country, claimed that ships laden with important cargo have to wait for several days beyond the stipulated time for discharge.
Ship operators blame the poor efficiency of the port for extra delays which cost them up to $20,000 per day for the operation of each ship. The consumers have to bear the operational costs ultimately, importers say.
There were some 20 ships in berths and moorings at the port while 25 ships awaited berths on Sunday, port officials said.
The port handled some 37 million tonnes of cargo. That is more than 80 percent of the country's external trade in 2009-10 (July-June), 21.39 percent up from the previous fiscal year.
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