KARACHI: The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) is in a process to send a rejoinder to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for the earliest establishment of an authority to regulate the ports and shipping sector.
Talking to Customs Today, the chairman of KCCI’s Sub-Committee on Ports, Shipping and Multi-modal Transport Asif Nisar Vohra, has said that the importers are facing immense problems due to absence of an authority to regulate the ports and shipping sector. With the ports and shipping sector remaining unregulated in its entirety, not only the port operators, shipping companies and the on-dock terminal operators are free to charge tariffs as they wish but all the on-dock container terminals- BOML, NICL, Pak Shaheen and AICT are also demanding exorbitant charges, he said. The off-dock terminals have become 20-25 percent more expensive than the on-dock terminals, he added.
Vohra said that he had written a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in August, seeking the passing of Logistics Service Providers Regulatory Authority Bill 2013, an approved summary of which has already been submitted to the cabinet by the ministry of commerce.
Similarly, he said he had also written a letter to Finance Minister Ishaq Dar few months ago for establishing an authority to bring the charges of the shipping companies, each of which allowed to charge their very own high rates, pushing the landed cost to unaffordable levels for the importers, he added.
“We have not received any reply from the prime minister and the finance minister and thus we would be sending them a rejoinder to at least establish an association until the establishment of an authority to regulate the ports and shipping sector which remains totally unregulated to allow port operators as well on- and off-dock terminals to charge exorbitant high tariffs.”
