RoRo industry laments on excessive gov’t fees

Aside from route competition, the “roll-on, roll-off” sector of the domestic shipping industry is also experiencing other difficulties that hinder their growth among which are the arbitrary imposition of fees by some local government sectors where their fleets sail.

In their previously held general membership meeting in Cebu, Philippine Roro Shipping Association, Incorporated (PRSAI) tackled inherent issues that concern their sector and the arbitrary imposition of fees was among the hottest issues the industry players wanted to address.

According to their guest of honor Department of Transportation and Communication secretary Leandro Mendoza, “contrary to the desire of the president to unburden the industry players with unnecessary cost that may hinder their operations and growth, circumstances such as corruption in the local government unit’s level oftentimes gets out of control so we task players to actively repress this by actively pursuing what is appropriate.”

Mendoza further addressed the body by saying that, “I can assure that you can get the support of the president as she is supportive of actions against unnecessary transport costs because we know that it is burden to you.”

Mendoza also discussed that like the shipping industry, land transportation industry is also similarly undertaking the same effort to lessen burden of unnecessary imposition of fees which have greatly affected several of their operations especially in regional areas.

However Roro sector players discussed that not all ports in the country are collecting unnecessary fees although there are quite a number that does; such as the ports in Matnog, Sorsogon, Aklan and in Loon and Tubigon, Bohol to name a few.

Some shipping companies have already filed legal cases against local government sectors and other public offices that have in ways collected unnecessary fees but most of which are still waiting for results while some cases have been settled.

Montenegro Shipping and shipping company Philharbor Ferries and Port Services owned by PRSAI president Christopher Pastrana were among those who filed a case in Caticlan.

But the fastest way to address this issue according to some players is for the association to write to the DILG secretary about these cases so they can secure legal opinion and achieve an issuance of an executive order that can resolve this industry problem.

“Some of the ports have been funded by other private companies and not by Local Government Units but still these sectors impose fees which are really burdening players like us especially those smaller companies,” said Jun Lim of Lite Shipping.One port in Tubigon allegedly charges P70 cents fee per baggage and industry players collectively agreed that this imposition is more than that charged by the Philippine Ports Authority. The port in Matnog on the other hand is a four-year old case and is under preliminary injunction. The LGu there is collecting P1, 000 as docking fee and about 25 boats dock in the port daily especially during peak season and shipping companies collectively agree that the sum of their collection would reach to a ship’s worth if tallied for a year.

The PRSAI president pointed out in an interview that the association will be proposing to establish a technical working group to be composed of representatives from the DILG, DOTC, and DOJ in which by-product will be an action plan to stop these matters from getting worse and from hindering the projected growth of the Ro-Ro sector.