SOUTH AMERICA

Peru laments cost of box handling

9 years ago

Handling containers in Peru is overly expensive, according to the Lima Chamber of Commerce (CCL).

Handling containers in Peru is overly expensive, according to the CCL Photo: redronafets/flickr/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 — Global container volumes hit a record high in July. Image: Flickr-redronafets-CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

To pick up a 20-foot box from a port and take it to an external storage area costs around $1,300, compared with just $300 in other European or Latin American countries.

According to Alberto Ego-Aguirre, president of the CCL’s Commission for Maritime Ports and Customs Affairs: “This extra cost is an impediment to companies’ competitiveness and, as a consequence, to the development of foreign trade.”

In Peru’s leading port of Callao, which handles 80% of overseas trade, it can often take 9-12 hours to get hold of a road haulage vehicle. Mr Ego-Aguirre is therefore calling for the construction of truck-only lanes for those hauliers working in import-export container traffic.

He also wants changes to the cabotage law to allow non-Peruvian shipping lines to use spare capacity to move boxes between domestic ports, since only Peruvian-flagged vessels can currently do this.