Commerce Ministry discusses shipping, port and packaging challenges with exporters

New Delhi: The Commerce Ministry on Thursday held meetings with exporters to discuss challenges related to packaging, shipping and port operations amid the West Asia crisis, an official said. Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal chaired two meetings, which were attended by representatives of export promotion councils and commodity boards.

The commerce secretary, Shipping Secretary Vijay Kumar, shipping lines, ports, Export Promotion Councils (EPCs), and exporters discussed issues related to ports and shipping in the context of the ongoing challenges, and to explore feasible solutions, the industry officials said.

EPCs were requested to share specific issues or challenges being faced at ports so that these may be taken up effectively during the discussion.

The joint attack launched by the US and Israel on Iran had led to severe disruptions in the movement of ships in international waters, particularly to the West Asian nations.

The other meeting was held to deliberate on key packaging challenges faced by the industry arising from the evolving situation in West Asia and to identify operational responses. According to industry players, rising prices of petrochemicals have led to a surge in raw material costs, resulting into a 50 per cent hike in the prices of packaging materials in the past few weeks.

Issues which figured in this meeting included measures to enhance food exports in the current global supply scenario, strategies to address shortages of packing materials across sectors and key trade issues arising from the Middle East crisis, along with suggested remedial measures.

Exporters suggested that the waiver granted by ports and other stakeholders should be passed transparently to the trade, and it should be an upfront benefit by all agencies rather than first charging and then refunding. They also urged that the Rs 497-crore RELIEF scheme of ECGC (Export Credit Guarantee Corporation) should cover other countries like Egypt , for which shipping lines have announced war surcharge.

The government last month launched the RELIEF (Resilience & Logistics Intervention for Export Facilitation) scheme to help exporters tide over the disruptions due to the West Asia conflict. They also suggested that the bunker facility may be provided at Paradeep and Vizag ports and the easy ‘back to town’ facilities should be extended to containers offloaded at foreign ports as customs is asking to follow a cumbersome process of reimport.