LAHORE: In a bid to improve quantum of exports, the Closet Committee on Transport as well as Logistics on Thursday made a decision that the Port Qasim Authority (PQA) would decrease wet as well as completely dry port fees by 50 percent.
The committee in a meeting commanded by Preacher for Maritime Matters Ali Zaidi asked the Karachi Port Count On (KPT) to check out the opportunity of reduction of port fees as done by the PQA and installed a proposal before it via the ministry of maritime affairs for factor to consider.
The committee routed the PQA to seek lawful viewpoint pertaining to exclusivity rights of coal handling by the Pakistan International Mass Terminal (PIBT) and interact to the ministry within one week for entry before it. The assistant of the ministry was routed to communicate the choice to the PQA quickly.
The meeting was consentaneous to develop a board making up the railways priest as convener as well as the unique assistant to the PM on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to conduct a questions of giving exclusivity right of coal taking care of to the PIBT. The committee to be formed will certainly be reliant explore the openness as well as legality of such agreement and submit a record to the cupboard board within two weeks.
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It also guided the KPT to look for lawful point of view on the Supreme Court judgment related to the stoppage of coal handling. The KPT was guided to discover opportunity to develop coal managing facilities on international criteria.
Because of the limited capability of PIBT, serious blockage at the port is triggering hold-ups of approximately 15 days in offloading of imported coal. The delays are leading to constant unjustified exhaustion of precious foreign reserves which coal importers are paying as ship demurrage. The coal importers have actually reportedly paid $150 million as demurrage in the past 6 months because of the inefficiency and also limited capacity to handle imported coal by the PIBT.
“Generally coal importers are paying 35,000 to 40,000 dollars per vessel each day as ship demurrage and also around 8 to 10 coal vessels align can be observed in waiting at the port for discharge,” claimed a coal importer.
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