PEZA pushes use of Batangas Port

MANILA, Philippines - It is the best port in the country, was how PEZA (Philippine Export Zone Authority) director general Lilia de Lima described the modernized Batangas Port in a forum that hopes to attract interest in the use of the faculty.

“We are now working for its full use. Give us the volume needed to lure in the international shipping lines and we will produce that volume,” the PEZA boss added.

Her bold dare was to break what she called a chicken-and-egg situation confronted by the port.

Shipping lines, she explained, refuse to call on the port due to lack of volume while manufacturers in the region do not use the port because there are no ships that regularly call the port.

The PEZA official gave her message at the start of a seminar on how to get the southern Luzon port more useful. This was organized by the Japan International Cooperation Agency at the RCBC Plaza in Makati.

De Lima added that a breakthrough was, however, reached when starting last January, MCC Transport started making weekly calls to the port, sailing out to destinations in other port cities of Asia every Saturday.

MCC, wholly owned subsidiary of the A.P. Moller - Maersk Group, is an Intra-Asia carrier delivering containerised cargo through an extensive feeder network. It was the first international shipping line that made a great leap of faith on the Batangas port by scheduling weekly trips.

De Lima said that key players in running the port and providing support services are busy working out a system of cutting down by half its fees until the end of the year to hasten the full use of the port.

The original discount set last January was to last until June.

She further revealed that three new big Japanese manufacturing companies including Brother and Canon have set up their manufacturing plants in special economic zones in the Calabarzon region and would be ready to ship their goods from the area by next year.