A Sideways Glance

Let’s talk about competitiveness

Let’s talk a little about the competitiveness of our ports and see why investments will be unlikely to reach our country, as investors prefer other, neighbouring countries, where things are somewhat better...

The “X” cargo ship , arrived in Piraeus on a recent Thursday morning. In one way or another (priority is given to container ships, cruise ships, tankers and lastly cargo ships), the ship was allocated a pilot boat and finally moored in the port, near Piraeus at 12 noon. At the port, however, work stops at three in the afternoon.

“Well, since we stop work at three, let’s leave the unloading for tomorrow”, decided the people in charge of the loading and unloading at the port.

The next day, Friday, the unloading begins and by the afternoon at three, when the port stops operating, there are about forty coils of iron left. With a couple of extra hours, unloading would have been completed. But at three o’clock they “shut up shop”.

The weekend follows, when the port does not operate (this, of course, doesn’t happen in other ports, where they know the meaning of “competitiveness” and have special shifts to cover weekends and holidays when there are ships to service) and the ship remains moored and idle for two days.

On Monday and Tuesday, we have bad weather, with snow and poor conditions (common in any other European port, where work continues with far more snow and under much worse conditions) and the ship remains stranded in the port, with its small remaining cargo almost untouched! It doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone that the work could at least have been carried out during breaks in the weather.

In other words, the shipping company lost: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. The unloading, of course, would resume on Wednesday. Or not... because on Wednesday, the customs officers went on strike and the port remained closed!

Let’s go back a few days now. The steamer had arrived at the Turkish port of Derince at midnight on Friday. At one on Saturday morning, all the procedures (pilot, side mooring), were completed and loading started at 2.30 in the morning! That is to say, the ports there operate 24 hours a day! The loading was completed by daybreak on Sunday and before the sun came up, the ship had set course for Greece!

Let’s make the comparison. The vessel had to stay in the Turkish port for about 36 hours to complete the loading.

In the final Greek port, it took six days to unload! Let’s not talk about the loss to the company, given that the minimum operating costs of the ship are about 20,000 dollars a day (an amount which is certain to be passed on to the consumer under the unwritten laws of the market). And let’s not talk about the potentially far greater damage had the company sourced another load of cargo and missed out on it “due to force majeure”.

How can we even begin to talk about competitiveness in this country?

Dimitris Kapranos