Shipping company hails Budget initiatives
Less cargo trucks on roads will be a direct result of the Government’s decision to remove coasting trade permit and streamline coastal trading license and sea route licence, a shipping company has said.
Shipping Services Fiji Limited (SSFL) welcomed the move which was announced in the national budget last Friday.
“Rather than 15 trucks on the road running empty containers from Suva to Lautoka, we can now ship them,” SSFL managing director Bernard Hong-Tiy said.
Some empty containers transported from Suva to Lautoka are used for export purposes, he said.
“It’s good that they’ve streamlined the process - that helps,” Mr HongTiy said.
“For the Government, the move means more money as we will have to pay port costs for loading and unloading.”
The same costs would not be incurred if the containers were transported via roads, he said.
For container line shipping companies such as SSFL, moving cargo containers from one domestic port to another, would not incur additional cargo fees, he said.
“That’s because the container line will be taking its own containers from Suva to Lautoka,” Mr Hong-Tiy said.
“It’s the best way to move containers for Maersk, especially with border restrictions.”
Attorney-General Aiyaz SayedKhaiyum said foreign cargo ships were exempted from acquiring a coast trading permit.
“They simply notify the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service 48-hours
before they sail to a Fijian port,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
SSFL was pleased with the removal of archaic regulations that permitted clearing and quarantining vessels before sundown.
“We’ve been asking for this for years,” Mr Hong-Tiy said.