PPA tells importers: Stop using ports for storage

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has warned importers against using ports as warehouses to avoid paying more for storage fees, asking them to pull their shipments out as soon as possible to prevent yard congestion.

In a recent radio interview, PPA general manager Jay Santiago said several importers deliberately delay the withdrawal of their containers to save up on costs.

At present, the PPA collects a storage handling fee of only P700 per day, a rate Santiago said is lower as opposed to stowage in a private warehouse.

An importer who parked a container in a port for 30 days would pay just P30,000. Santiago said such an amount pales in comparison to the value of goods inside the container, which runs up to millions of pesos at times.

Given this, Santiago said the PPA is working with the Bureau of Customs to assess how they can discourage the exploitation of ports as warehouses. He underscored the urgency to eliminate the practice, as ports are designed to move, not store, cargo.

“We are coordinating with Customs [on how to compel] importers not to delay the filing of their importation entry, and we are slowly reviewing our processes in the PPA,” Santiago said.

Lately, the PPA has observed that a number of traders are waiting for a month before they apply for import entries for containers that are already unloaded in the ports.

Once an import entry is filed with the Customs, only then can the agency facilitate the clearance for a shipment, after which the importer has 30 days to get the cargo, or else it would be deemed condemned.

The PPA wants importers, particularly of agricultural products, to pull out their containers from the ports as fast as possible during the holiday leadup. In line with this, the agency has written a letter to the Department of Agriculture naming importers who failed to withdraw their farm shipments from the Port of Manila as of September.

Broken down, the port has an inventory of 135 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of pork, 101 TEUs of chicken and 24 TEUs of onions. Further, the PPA has found 21 containers of pork waiting at the port for more than 30 days, with five exceeding 1,000 days in the facility.

Likewise, the PPA has uncovered 22 containers of chicken that were already cleared by Customs but are still parked in the port for over 30 days, with 12 of them now going over 600 days.

Santiago hopes that these overstaying cargoes would be minimized during the Christmas stretch to avert artificial increases in market prices at a time when consumer demand usually peaks.