International trade at ports across the country has been affected by technical problems and higher fuel surcharges during the past month.
International trade at ports across the country has been affected by technical problems and higher fuel surcharges during the past month.
Trouble with the Integrated Cargo System for the online cargo clearance of imports, introduced by the Australian Customs Service a fortnight ago, has resulted in major delays for customs brokers and forwarders at terminals.
At the same time, a 10 per cent increase in the sea freight bunker fuel surcharge has affected the profitability of exports and imports.
Customs Brokers & Forwarders Council of Australia WA regional manager, John Park, told WA Business News the new ICS system had created major headaches at Fremantle Port and Perth Airport, with the time to process a single customs declaration taking three to four hours, compared with the usual five minutes.
As a result, many forwarding staff have been required to work appreciably longer hours to deal with the backlog.
Some owners feared they would soon be put out of business if staff began to leave, Mr Park said.
The same online system was implemented without incident 12 months ago for the smaller exports component of customs clearances.
However, the supporting IT infrastructure has not been up to scratch for imports, with cargo being put into storage as a result, according to Mr Park.
To deal with the problem, Australian Customs re-established the original Customs OnLine Interactive Entries (COMPILE) system for processing some declarations, but this had also suffered technical issues, he said.
A Customs spokesman contacted by WA Business News acknowledged that difficulties had been experienced during implementation of the imports component of the ICS system.
Rising oil prices of recent months are also affecting sea trade and international shipping.
Last week the Australian and New Zealand/Eastern Shipping Conference and the Asia-Australia Discussion Agreement increased the freight import surcharge for bunker fuel oil, used by large ships, for ships travelling to North East Asia, to $US275 for six-metre containers and $US550 for 12m-containers, up from $US250 and $US500 respectively.
It’s understood similar increases have also been made for exported freight.
Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA international trade centre manager, Ian Whitaker, said the bunker surcharge was a “pretty significant additional slug over and above negotiated freight rates and really does impact negatively on the profitability of exports and imports,” and the ICS issues were a “debacle”.
