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On December 16th 2016, The Association of Shipping Interests in Calcutta ( ASIC ) elected their new Managing Committee for the year 2016-17 in their 46th AGM at Kolkata.
Mr Ashok Janakiram, Director Pennon Shipping Pvt. Ltd. has been unanimously elected once again as the President of the Association.
Capt. B.K. Khambatta & Mr. Pinaki Shankar Ghosh from Interocean Shipping & Sea Freight Solutions respectively have been elected as the Vice Presidents.
Six Executive Committee members elected are Mrs. Archana Bharati ( SCI ), Mr. Subrata Chowdhury ( MOL India ), Mr. Ketan Thakker ( NYK Line ), Mr. Felix Thakur ( APL India ) , Mr. Chiranjit Goswami ( OOCL ) & Mr. Probir Chakraborty ( PIL India ).
Further Mr. Subrata Chowdhury of MOL India was unanimously chosen to continue as Hony. Secretary of the Association for the next term.
In his welcome address, President Mr. Ashok Janakiram briefed on current issues faced by shipping with reference to both local as well as International shipping scenario and held poor market sentiments as main challenge.
Giving account of ongoing EXIM situation, he made reference to anaemic freight market where freight rates have dropped to 44% in main haul routes in the world, which resulted in tough situation, for all the Carriers to meet the challenges.
In his further analysis, Mr. Ashok Janakiram found a report whereby indepth examination of the past 12 months’ results reveals that cash from operations fell 12%—almost twice as fast as the EBITDA decline of 7%.
The fall out of this trend means Carriers have to fund for working capital at much higher rates than before.
He further pointed out that the global fleet is forecasted to continue growing at 4.6% in 2016, and another 4.7% in 2017 as larger vessels continue to emerge in the trade.
Meanwhile, many demand forecasts are half that figure or less—generally, 1 to 3% globally.
The arrival of such ultra large vessels exacerbates supply-and-demand imbalances on the major trade lanes.
Mr. Ashok Janakiram felt that any such sharp turn in demand supply gap would be detrimental and he feared further insolvency as in the recent past where a global Carrier had to suspend its operation.
He felt that global shipping is under such stress that any amount of recovery is just not adequate, unless global consumer demand picks up substantially to commensurate the supply situation.
Referring to the local port centric issues, he hoped for better infrastructure at port and consistency in business policy to prevent any shift of business from the twin ports of Kolkata & Haldia to neighbouring ports.
Giving account of recent traffic related restriction at Port bound roads in Kolkata, he looked forward for a better synergy between stakeholders and authorities concerned and a long term sustainable solution to ease off current pressure in the city based port of Kolkata, where exports are still generating directly from warehouses and import clearance within the dock is on rise, especially when there is a congestion at yard and limited business hour for moving container inside & outside the port.
He felt that all exports should be generated from off dock CFSs to expedite the gate movement and faster turnaround at port, and in turn to achieve lower transaction cost & time.
He expressed anguish over the prevailing poor draft conditions at Kolkata Port, adding to the apathy of Vessel Operators calling this Dock System and facing increased operational costs owing to inadequate vessel handling facilities in comparison to the demand.
The forthcoming proposal for increase in Port’s Scale of Rates is bound to have an adverse effect on the Port’s future growth, considering the emergence of neighbouring private ports willing to offer concessions to attract traffic.
He appealed to the Port Authorities to realize the ground realities, instead of being one sided in their approach to earn revenue for the Port for disbursement of pensions at the cost of loosing out in garnering support from trade in times to come.
The AGM was attended by a large number of members from cross section of the fraternity.
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