GPHA disagrees with shipping lines on astronomical increment in charges

The Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority (GPHA) has expressed some reservations about the advertised increased shipping charges by shipping lines at the country’s sea ports.

General Manager, Marketing and Corporate Affairs of the GPHA, Mrs Esther Gyebi-Donkor, speaking on Eye on Port on Sunday monitored by norvanreports, admitting the increments in charges by shipping lines is as a result of increments in charges imposed on them by the GPHA, she however, disagreed with the direct offloading of the charges on to members of the trading community.

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According to her, the GPHA expected that shipping lines will add the charges imposed on them to the overall total freight cost charged importers, exporters and freight forwarders and not as part of local charges.

We acknowledge that the charges are costs to the shipping lines but we don’t agree that all the charges imposed on them are directly offloaded onto traders as part of local charges as it is right now, we expected it to be part of total freight cost and not local charges because local port charges are factored into freight rates of shipping lines and so we expected it to be part of freight rate,” she said.

“We also expected that the shipping lines will absorb some of the charges imposed on them by the GPHA and not transfer them to traders. This is because of the investments made by government in increasing the efficiency of operations at the port, in 2019 turn around time for shipping lines at the port was 3 days 7 hours but in 2020 it reduced to 2 days 5 hours and its all because of the improved efficiency as a result of the investments made.”

And shipping lines factor a port’s efficiency in charging freight rates and we also expected them to consider that also and absorb some of the costs and not offload everything onto importers, exporters and freight forwarders,” she added.

The increased charges reviewed upwards for shipping lines by the GPHA, Mrs Donkor noted include port dues, stevedoring, cranage and empty containers charges.

“For the port dues we are looking at $10 increase, stevedoring $15, cranage $5, and empty containers also $5 increase, so that adds up to $35 reflecting a 14.5 per cent increment in current charges,” she stated.

Importers, exporters and freight forwarders in the country have opposed increments in shipping charges scheduled to take effect on Monday, March 1, 2021, describing the increments in charges as having no legal backing and contrary to the regulations of the Ghana Shippers Authority (GSA).

They lament that the advertised charges by the shipping lines are more than 100 per cent increment in the current charges.

But according to Mrs Donkor, the new charges being implemented by shipping lines have been on the table for negotiations between all relevant stakeholders since last year and was even scheduled to take effect in October 2020, but had to be suspended to March 1, 2021.

Hence the charges are not new to the trading community.