Recently, the Chittagong Port Authority has introduced a new regulation: all types of "Gearless vessels" container feeder ships must wait 4 days to berth in Chittagong.

This also means that the shipment of such ships in Chittagong will face three to four days of delay.

Related feeder vessel operators claim that due to the Port Authority's "discriminatory" policies, their costs are rising.

It is reported that there are about 45 gearless feeder vessels to and from Chittagong and Colombo, Singapore, Port Klang and Tanjung Perebas transshipment ports, to and from mother ships to carry containers.

But the shipowners claim the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) is giving priority to ships flying the country's flag, as well as those from Chittagong directly to Europe.

Chittagong has seven docks equipped with key gantry cranes, but three are used for "instant priority berthing", reducing the available space for gearless vessels to only four docks, but as imports grow, the operator claims this is far from enough.

Stakeholders said the delays caused additional daily costs of about 10000 to 15000 dollars, which could push up commodity prices.

Yangming Shipping's agency Transmarine Logistics on Tuesday sent a letter to the Shipping Agency Association, pointing out the serious delay.

The company said: "The delayed arrival of inbound goods will undoubtedly hinder production activities, which will affect the preparation and delivery of export goods, so export revenue may be adversely affected."

Bangladesh Shipping Agency Association President Syed Mohammad Arif said he had raised the issue with the port authorities to seek an immediate solution to the issue.

He said: "The sudden increase in inbound vessels (in numbers) has exacerbated the problem."

He added that priority berthing was another issue.

At the same time, the World Shipping Council (WSC) has expressed serious concern about the impact of the newly introduced rule, under which Bangladesh-flagged ships have priority berthing privileges, which has already led to a number of problems, including reduced competition for shipping services to and from Bangladesh, delays, congestion and other business disruptions.

WSC in a letter to Bangladesh's shipping minister said that these consequences for Bangladesh's importers and exporters have a significant negative impact, and ultimately on the heavily dependent on foreign trade of the national economy.

Source: one shipping