By: Momodou Justice Darboe
The worsening congestion at the Banjul Port has been forcing importers of basic food commodities into paying millions of Dalasi in demurrage charges despite the ongoing efforts to de-congest the country’s only seaport, this medium can report.
Dependable sources have informed this reporter that it’s now very difficult to order food commodities into the country because some shipping companies have been refusing offers to come to the Banjul Port due to the operational inefficiency of the port.
Some have accused the GPA of treating some importers of bulk cargoes preferentially, leading to avoidable delays in berthing of vessels, carrying their cargoes.
A rice importer, who preferred not to be named for fear of reprisals, told this reporter that he recently lost more than D25M in demurrage charges because priority was given to vessels, carrying imported pulverized cement.
“But that’s not something to lose sleep over because I am going to recover the loss from the end consumers by increasing the retail prices of my commodity,” he explained.
According to him, he incurred this huge loss because priority was given to a cement company to off-load its cargo.
However, this has generated widespread accusations against the government of The Gambia and the Gambia Port Authority.
The Gambia government’s tariff policy on imported cement has not only been causing upheavals in the cement market but it’s also cascading into other aspects of business such as food commodity import. The government said its move to astronomically increase the levy on a bag of cement by 500% was precipitated by the need to protect local cement companies from the influx of imported cement.
“If at all cement is produced locally, there would be no need for cement-carrying vessels to cause unnecessary congestion at the port,” another importer maintained.
“There would be no need to give priority to any cement vessel,” added our interlocutor.
When contacted for his reaction to the claim that GPA had been favouring other businesses over others, GPA’s communications officer Gibou M. Saidy, said the port does not grant any preferential treatment to any business outfit.
“At the port here, we operate on the first come, first served basis. It’s true that we are operating an inefficient port and that’s why we are investing 19 million dollars to improve the operational efficiency of the port. The new deepsea port option is another intervention to solve the problem of congestion,” he explained.
Be that as it may, importers of food commodities such as rice have been undergoing hard times due to what, they called, the favouritism at the port.