Sri Lankan economic crisis deal a blow to Thoothukudi port
THOOTHUKUDI: The economic crisis underway in Sri Lanka has severely hit the container shipment at VO Chidambaranar Port in Thoothukudi. Industrial bodies, shipping agents, and customs brokers said due to the sudden inflation in the island-nation, the movement of cargo shipment at Colombo port has declined markedly, leading to the lull at VOC port. Over 70 per cent of the containers transhipped at Colombo port originate from India.
As the VOC port lacks berthing infrastructure for large vessels, it vastly depends on the Colombo port. The cargoes are shipped to Colombo in feeder vessels that ply between the two ports six times a week. Subsequently, the cargoes are transhipped in mother vessels from Colombo to other countries. As of Tuesday, over 4,325 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) containers filled with cargo, which are ready for export, are stagnating at Thoothukudi due to the non-availability of vessels.
"The Lankan authorities at present cannot afford the costs of transferring containers from one terminal to the mother-vessel-loading terminal, which is over eight-km away from the first terminal, due to the sky-rocketing fuel prices and power shortage there," National Association of Container Freight Station vice president J David Raja told TNIE. A shipping firm owner said companies in the island-nation were also not in a position to pay the vessels for services already rendered since they had run out of US dollar reserves. "All this together has snowballed the economic crisis," he added.
Former president of Thoothukudi Customs Brokers Association Jeyant Thomas recalled that less than 1,500 TEUs would be waiting for slots in vessels at any given point of time till about six months ago. "However, over 4,000 TEUs are awaiting shipment avenues now. The spiralling economic crisis in the island nation has had a cascading effect on the import and export sector of India," he said. The Sri Lanka government, which declared an economic emergency last September, subsequently faced a double whammy when prices of domestic commodities shot through the roof and debts mounted, majorly due to the pandemic's impact on the country's tourism industry.
The industrial bodies and shipping agents have urged the Ministry of Shipping to launch a feeder vessel to Singapore to mitigate the crisis. Members of the Association for Tuticorin Hub Port Development said the need of the hour is to develop the VOC port into a transshipment hub on the east coast of Tamil Nadu in order to reduce its dependency on Colombo port.