Thanks to congestion at ports in Singapore, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, a staggering 25,000 import containers are stuck in these transhipment ports, thereby causing financial loss to businesses, hampering production on account of shortage of raw materials and creating a sense of business uncertainty.
It may be mentioned here that in the absence of any deep seaport in Bangladesh, large container ships cannot dock at the jetty of Chittagong Port and consequently containers imported from different countries are first unloaded at the transhipment ports even as people in know of things said that as workers at the Port of Colombo paused their activities last November on account of the coronavirus pandemic, it led to congestion.
Meanwhile, speaking to the media, garment manufacturer MDM Mohiuddin Chowdhury, who is the Clifton Group Director underlined that containers of almost every garment manufacturing entity were stuck at transhipment ports, adding most containers coming from Europe have been stuck in the transhipment port and went on to further underline the Group last week had imported three containers of raw materials from the United States even as the containers were stuck for 50 days at the transhipment port of Colombo as there was a lack of feeder vessels due to an increase in import volume while as per several shipping lines, most of the containers (around 20,000 TEUs) — as per reports, about 25,000 TEUs containers of imported industrial raw materials from many garment companies in Bangladesh have long been stuck at the transhipment ports — are stuck in Colombo.
