Chennai Port mulling relaxing cargo dwell time: Chairman

Chennai Port is considering plans to relax the prescribed time limit allowing traders to keep the cargo in its premises, a top official said here today.
The move by the Port was in the backdrop of economic downturn and slowdown in China, Chennai Port Trust Chairman M A Bhaskarachar said.
Considering the fact that industries were "facing difficulties" in terms of cost cutting due to economic downturn and the slowdown in China, he said "the penal demurrage slabs will be relaxed in consultation with the industry shortly".
Chennai Port had introduced a penal demurrage system to discourage storage (of cargoes) a few years back, he told reporters.

Pointing out that Port area was essential for a trader not to keep cargo for a longer period of time, he said, "all over the world Port authorities discourage longer dwell time by imposing demurrage for cargoes staying in Port above a prescribed period".
On the initiatives taken by the Port, he said the manual processing methodology to track the container system was "slowing down the vehicular movement significantly".

"In order to eliminate this an RFID (Radio frequency identification) based container tracking system has been tested involving CFS (Container Freight Station), Customs, terminal operators", he said.
Trial runs are over and system is being installed in various CFS and was expected to be operational by January 2016, he said.

Giving statistics on the amount of cargo handled by the Port in 2014-15, he said total cargo was 52,541,000 tonnes, with a majority being container cargo at 29,945,000 tonnes.