TT Chamber warns of cargo disruptions on sea bridge

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has raised con­cern over se­ri­ous op­er­a­tional chal­lenges af­fect­ing car­go move­ment be­tween Port of Spain and To­ba­go, warn­ing that the con­straints are dis­rupt­ing sup­ply chains and in­creas­ing costs for busi­ness­es.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Cham­ber said it re­ceived de­tailed feed­back from mem­bers who re­port­ed ex­tend­ed de­liv­ery times, re­duced sail­ing fre­quen­cy, 48 to 52 hour truck turn­around cy­cles, pro­longed port wait­ing pe­ri­ods, high­er trans­porta­tion costs and in­ad­e­quate han­dling arrange­ments for re­frig­er­at­ed car­go.

The Cham­ber said what was pre­vi­ous­ly a pre­dictable one day sup­ply cy­cle has ex­pand­ed in­to a two to three day lo­gis­tics cy­cle.

Un­der the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, car­go loaded in Port of Spain dur­ing the morn­ing does not sail un­til ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11.00 pm, ar­riv­ing in To­ba­go at 6.00 am the fol­low­ing day. When com­bined with re­turn sched­ul­ing, trucks re­main tied up for up to two days. Mem­bers al­so in­di­cat­ed that car­go move­ment has fall­en from ap­prox­i­mate­ly five sail­ings per week to three.

Truck­ers must re­main at the Port of Port of Spain for up to 12 hours pri­or to sail­ing, with­out struc­tured ac­com­mo­da­tion or rest fa­cil­i­ties. For re­frig­er­at­ed car­go, op­er­a­tors must run gen­er­a­tors for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods dur­ing wait­ing times, sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­ing fu­el costs and me­chan­i­cal wear.

The Cham­ber out­lined what it de­scribed as im­me­di­ate and mea­sur­able com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions. It said longer lead times re­quire dis­trib­u­tors to car­ry high­er in­ven­to­ry lev­els, in­creas­ing work­ing cap­i­tal ex­po­sure. Trucks im­mo­bilised for 48 to 52 hours re­duce fleet pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and force con­sid­er­a­tion of ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal in­vest­ment. High­er fu­el con­sump­tion and port side wait­ing costs raise the land­ed cost of goods in To­ba­go, while per­ish­able goods face in­creased spoilage risk dur­ing ex­tend­ed wait­ing and tran­sit cy­cles.

The Cham­ber added that re­port­ed un­der util­i­sa­tion of ves­sel ca­pac­i­ty must be as­sessed with­in this op­er­a­tional con­text. It said the is­sue may not re­flect re­duced de­mand for car­go space but con­strained truck­ing ca­pac­i­ty, as op­er­a­tors can­not af­ford to have lim­it­ed fleets tied up for mul­ti­ple days per ship­ment cy­cle.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said Jear­lean John, Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Works and In­fra­struc­ture, is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a pub­lic up­date and wel­comed op­er­a­tional da­ta and clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, it said pol­i­cy­mak­ers must ac­knowl­edge the full com­mer­cial im­pact on busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing be­tween Port of Spain and To­ba­go.

De­scrib­ing the sea bridge as a strate­gic eco­nom­ic cor­ri­dor sup­port­ing food dis­tri­b­u­tion, con­struc­tion sup­plies, re­tail in­ven­to­ry, man­u­fac­tur­ing in­puts and tem­per­a­ture sen­si­tive goods, the Cham­ber warned that ex­tend­ed lead times and in­creased lo­gis­tics costs will ul­ti­mate­ly re­flect in pric­ing, sup­ply con­sis­ten­cy and busi­ness sus­tain­abil­i­ty in To­ba­go.

The Cham­ber called for ur­gent mul­ti stake­hold­er en­gage­ment in­volv­ing the Min­istry, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, freight op­er­a­tors and af­fect­ed busi­ness­es to re­view sail­ing fre­quen­cy and turn­around ef­fi­cien­cy, book­ing trans­paren­cy and car­go al­lo­ca­tion, re­frig­er­at­ed car­go man­age­ment pro­to­cols, dri­ver wel­fare and port lo­gis­tics, and cost es­ca­la­tion across the sup­ply chain.

It said ef­fi­cient car­go move­ment be­tween Port of Spain and To­ba­go re­mains fun­da­men­tal to na­tion­al eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and in­ter is­land in­te­gra­tion, and pledged to con­tin­ue con­struc­tive en­gage­ment to en­sure that lo­gis­tics op­er­a­tions sup­port com­merce, pro­tect con­sumers and strength­en busi­ness con­fi­dence.