The Hindu Business Line : Tea shipment between Amingaon ICD-Haldia dock

THE Container Corporation of India (Concor) is to press for higher haulage charges to transport both empties and loaded containers between its Amingaon (Guwahati) inland container depot (ICD) and Haldia dock during the tea shipment season due to begin in June/July. Concor will place its demand before the shippers, shipping lines and others at the annual tea workshop to be held in Shillong, Meghalaya, on April 30.

The tea workshop, which is organised every year by Concor prior to the start of the tea shipment season, will also review last year's (2003-04) performance and try to assess this year's (2004-05) shipment prospects besides finalising the railway haulage charges for the year. It will be attended, among others, by the senior officials of Concor including its Managing Director, the Chairman of Tea Board and representatives of shipping lines keen to participate in the ICD shipment in the current fiscal and the shippers, both individual shippers and the companies such as George Williamson (Assam), Eveready, Goodricke.

The Concor sources, however, decline to indicate the extent of increase they will insist on. "We are still working out the details and our MD will announce the rates at the workshop," the sources said. Besides, as it is pointed out, the shippers would not generally accept anything that would be asked for. "We'll ask for something which the shippers will spurn immediately, only agreeing to some increase after a good deal of debate," the sources say.

At the last year's workshop, which was held to firm up programmes for tea shipments for 2003-04, the haulage charges were hiked from Rs 7,400 to Rs 8,100 per TEU for the empties and from Rs 11,000 to Rs 11,600 per TEU for the loaded containers. In other words, for a round trip, the increase was Rs 1,300 per TEU or around 7 per cent.

The tea shippers at the workshop, the Concor sources regret, would not usually come up with any firm projection about shipments, arguing that much would depend on the market condition which is uncertain. However, if the experience of the past few years is any indication, the shipments through the ICD have been on the decline. In 2003-04, the throughput was 1920 TEUs as compared with 1956 TEUs in 2002-03, 2005 TEUs in 2001-02 and 2335 TEUs in 2000-01.

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