DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

While oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al ports are well in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry, the Port of Port-of-Spain is still stuck in the 1960s. This is so be­cause of the in­ef­fi­cient and ar­cha­ic sys­tems that ex­ist at the port, ac­cord­ing Greig Laugh­lin, pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA). Laugh­lin was shar­ing sim­i­lar views to that of Wieger Koorn­stra, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Port of Port-of-Spain. Koorn­stra has said that if giv­en the right tools, the port could be­come more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive. Koorn­stra was al­lud­ing to the fact that if all stake­hold­ers ad­hered to the pro­ce­dures and the Gov­ern­ment finds the will to ful­ly com­put­erise op­er­a­tions, the port would be able max­imise its fullest po­ten­tial.

"We can grow here for the next five to ten years, once we ac­quire the right tools that would make us more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive," Koorn­stra said. He said that peo­ple should de­sist from com­par­ing the Port of Port-of-Spain with oth­er coun­tries be­cause as they have an on­line sys­tem. "By im­ple­ment­ing the As­cu­da sys­tem, which is an au­to­mat­ed sys­tem for Cus­toms da­ta, we would def­i­nite­ly re­duce the dwell time. "If the dwell time goes down, then every­one stands to ben­e­fit," he added. Koorn­stra said it costs a lot of mon­ey when ship­ments are not cleared on time and this cost trick­les down to the port's cus­tomers. The As­cu­da sys­tem, he said, would al­low all stake­hold­ers ac­cess to the sys­tem where all re­leas­es and ap­provals could be done on­line, elim­i­nat­ing all the "run around" a bro­ker un­der­goes.

In­ter­im mea­sures

At present, Koorn­stra said they have im­ple­ment­ed cer­tain mea­sures to as­sist in mak­ing op­er­a­tions run smooth­ly. He said since 2005, the port has im­ple­ment­ed its com­put­erised Cus­tom ter­mi­nal man­age­ment sys­tem. Fur­ther, ex­plain­ing how the com­put­erised ter­mi­nal func­tions, Trudy Gill-Con­lon, chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer at the port, said the sys­tem would al­low bro­kers to re­lease their con­tain­ers/ship­ments on­line. "We have giv­en Cus­toms and the agents ac­cess to our com­put­erised sys­tem so that bro­kers would be able to re­lease their ship­ments on­line in­stead of vis­it­ing the port to have it done," she said. "Once the car­go was re­leased in the sys­tem and the truck­ing com­pa­ny in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, then the port could re­lease the car­go to the bro­ker. This fa­cil­i­tates a next day de­liv­ery, un­less we en­counter prob­lems with the equip­ment," Gill-Con­lon said.

She said the port usu­al­ly con­ducts be­tween 400 and 700 de­liv­er­ies a day. She said it al­so met with the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sys­tem (CES) de­part­ment to im­prove the flow of ship­ments. There­fore, bro­kers are on­ly al­lowed to make ap­point­ments for their re­lease of car­go when they have all the req­ui­site ap­provals. This, she said, would avoid any of the de­lays which were oc­cur­ring pre­vi­ous­ly. Koorn­stra said there has been a num­ber of com­plaints from the small busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that it was tak­ing too long to clear one item. Koorn­stra said while he recog­nised the port is not per­fect, some peo­ple are not do­ing the right thing and was mak­ing the process dif­fi­cult. "For it to be suc­cess­ful, the stake­hold­ers need to fol­low the pro­ce­dures that are in place," he said.

Reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies non-func­tion­al

"Koorn­stra is some­how right, we cer­tain­ly would not be in this predica­ment but, sad­ly, the world has moved on and the Gov­ern­ment is still op­er­at­ing in the 1960s," Laugh­lin said. "Af­ter eight years, we are still wait­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the As­cu­da sys­tem." He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been call­ing for a stream­line sys­tem from reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies. He said the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, like Cus­toms and Food and Drugs can­not han­dle the amount of work be­fore them due to lim­it­ed staff. "It is un­der-staffed and was falling apart due to the lack of un­der­stand­ing or fear of change," he said. While ad­mit­ting the pri­vate sec­tor is not with­out fault, Laugh­lin said to en­sure every­thing is above board and every­body op­er­ates on a lev­el play­ing field, the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies needs to be func­tion­al. "I think the port is do­ing what it can with its sys­tem, but it may be eas­i­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed if there is no clear defin­ing poli­cies. "With the poli­cies and the As­cu­da sys­tem, we can make the port a one stop shop and cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for the coun­try," Laugh­lin said.

Em­brace tech­nol­o­gy

"T&T is be­com­ing less at­trac­tive be­cause of the lack of en­force­ment and in­ef­fi­cient sys­tems, which makes it un­com­pet­i­tive. We are los­ing good in­vest­ments be­cause of these is­sues," Laugh­lin said. He said the coun­try must em­brace tech­nol­o­gy and not feel in­tim­i­dat­ed to en­force laws and reg­u­la­tions. "The coun­try has a long way to go. I'm not say­ing the hur­dle is too high, but once things are im­ple­ment­ed, we would see a much brighter T&T." He ex­plained that in the be­gin­ning of 2010, lo­cal ex­ports de­clined con­sid­er­ably as con­struc­tion had slowed up," he said. He said the food and bev­er­age con­tin­ued to do well, even record­ing a slight in­crease be­cause of the qual­i­ty and pric­ing, there­fore, peo­ple con­tin­ued to in­vest up the is­lands, Laugh­lin said. Over­all, he said that busi­ness was flat, but the sec­tor was weath­er­ing a lot bet­ter, de­spite the odds.

Port per­for­mance

Koorn­stra said the port did quite well in 2008, with the do­mes­tic mar­ket rep­re­sent­ing about 60 per cent, while trans­ship­ment rep­re­sent­ed 40 per cent of over­all busi­ness. Busi­ness fell in 2009 by about 20 per cent; the port re­ceived 42 per cent in the do­mes­tic mar­ket and 58 per cent in trans­ship­ment car­go. For 2010, Koorn­stra said he is op­ti­mistic since the fig­ure rose a bit this year. So far it has been 50 per cent for do­mes­tic and 50 per cent for trans­ship­ment. He said the last ad­min­is­tra­tion bought a new crane, which car­ries about 5,000 con­tain­ers, so this could al­so in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to about 25 con­tain­ers in one hour, while 17 con­tain­ers an hour was the av­er­age per­for­mance. Koorn­stra said that trans­ship­ment sec­tor was a grow­ing in­dus­try and the coun­try should max­imise on that op­por­tu­ni­ty.