Nurul Amin :
Airfreight from Bangladesh has been suffering from an unprecedented backlog situation for the last few weeks. Physical structure of the Biman Export Cargo Village is witnessing a huge pile up of cargo. Forwarders are struggling to get goods uplifted as waiting period of shipments has exceeded 8 – 10 days. Costs have also been increased from 30 – 40 per cent in past weeks. Due to such excess costs, airlines are not accepting shipments, as space situation is very tight from their hubs, sometimes it requires 10-15 days to get onward connection.
Various factors have contributed to this stagnant situation. Firstly, imposition of advanced security measures by EU which requires secondary screening at hubs of airlines forced carriers to cut capacity upto more than half while Etihad Airways and Oman Air have entirely ceased airfreight services. Off-line carriers using Biman as first leg carrier to hubs have lost the capacity as BG has either cancelled services or diverted all wide-bodied aircrafts for pilgrim transportation. Situation has further worsened due to severe flooding in the country leading to congestion on major roads, 10-15 days of berthing delays of vessels at Chittagong port and damage of two gantry cranes in an accident. As a result, many ocean shipments have been converted to air to meet buyer’s deadline.
Facilities at Export Cargo Village are just not there to handle 650 – 800 tonnes cargo daily. Due to inadequate covered space cargoes cannot be unloaded from trucks even in 2-3 days and then processed for handover to airlines. Scanning of cargo is a nightmare due to shortage of space and machines as it takes 8-10 hours to mandatory x-ray shipments. In the process, forwarders sometimes fail to handover shipment before airline’s deadlines, thus missing booking, shippers facing cancellation for failing to meet arrival deadline.
In the past, some forwarders used sea-air or air-air services via Dubai and Colombo. That option is not working this time as transit from those places is taking 10-12 days. To clear backlogs some airlines, forwarders and shippers are operating chartered freighters. But many cannot afford operation of charters due to high costs of royalty payable to Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) and “revenue in one-way but cost is round trip” as the incoming sector is empty.
The situation above highlights crisis with airfreight from Bangladesh. Although airfreight demand from Bangladesh has recorded an average of 11 percent growth over past 7 years, facilities and infrastructure at airport are not at all supportive for the increase. As a result, shippers and forwarders are struggling to move shipments even at increased costs. Buyers are continuously expressing concern over our failure to improve infrastructure.
The future of our logistics industry and it’s ability to aid government to reach export target set for year 2021 will depend on government realization of the problems and solving immediately. Those include setting up another export cargo village, allowing export bonded warehouses for forwarders, improvement of handling efficiency, placement of enough scanning machines and explosive detective devices, procuring modern handling equipment, reducing royalty charged by CAAB for charter operations, lowering handling cost by national carrier, allowing more operators to bring in freighters in short notice.
(The writer is the Managing Director, Tower Freight Logistics Ltd, Dhaka)
