Long delays at the Chittagong Port cause huge financial losses to ship operators, which add to cost of business and raise prices for consumers. Most of the ships at the countrys premier port have to spend 24 to 99 hours whereas in Singapore and Malaysian ports, ships stay only for around 12 hours.

A World Bank report on strategic issues in ports pointed out that the turn around time for feeder vessels in Chittagong is 610 days, which is two days in Bangkok and one day in Singapore. It leads to inordinately high cost in the Bangladesh port that moves a container for $600 while a port in a neighbouring country can do it for $150300.

In ports such as Singapore and Malaysia, booking of cargo ceases at least 12 hours before its arrival but at Chittagong Port booking starts only after arrival of a ship.The booking continues for at least 24 hours. But the shipping agents can prolong the time with the permission of the traffic department.

According to the World Bank report all three major ports in Bangladesh suffer from overstaffing, labour strikes, cumbersome customs procedures, outdated and inefficient work rules and outdated inflexible management practices.

Monitoring the movement of 13 ships anchored at the port between December 15 last year and January 2 this year it was found that each ship spent 20 to 75 hours idle time at the terminal before starting cargo handling. Ships also waste 30 to 66 hours due to breaks in handling containers.

In the absence of any fixed cut off time for ships, the traffic department whimsically fixes the time for each ship and a ship can stay longer for loading additional cargo. Also the cut off time for the export cargo is not maintained and it causes much delay as the export containers come late or usually keep on coming one by one with an interval of 2030 minutes. The waiting time for export container is gradually increasing.

Due to delay in back up services, only 21 per cent of the capacity of four sophisticated gantry cranes is being utilised. Private operators were given the charge to operate the gantry cranes installed last year to accelerate cargo handling at the port. The CCT is enough to handle the entire volume of cargo bound for the Chittagong Port if its full capacity is utilised.

The delay at the terminal occurs also due to inefficiency of the port operators and nonavailability of handling equipment at the yards. Professional management of the port would save a lot of money which can be used for expansion of the port facilities and setting up new ports. The Chittagong Port Authority documentation staff deployed for assisting operation of quay gantry cranes waste much time simply tallying the container number, checking the seal and noting the seal number.

Insufficient quantity of trailers is also a big cause of delay, especially when import containers are supposed to go somewhere other than CCT terminal yards. Due to long distance, traffic jam often occurs inside the port, and access roads.

According to the World Bank report, port inefficiencies cost the country around $1.1 billion a year.