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Hong Kong's port faces a rising tide of competition
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Business English: Hong Kong's port faces a rising tide of competition
Major container port expansion programmes at Shekou and Chiwan are threatening Hong Kong's lead.Container terminal operators in the busy but slow-growing port of Hong Kong face an increasing competitive threat as expanding mainland Chinese ports try to become hubs for movements of containers between ships heading to and from other countries.
The business the mainland ports are pursuing - known as international trans-shipment - is vital to Hong Kong because so much of its traditional business handling cargo heading to and from mainland China has migrated to lower-cost mainland ports. Although Hong Kong last year remained the world's second-busiest container port after Singapore, throughput grew just 4.1 per cent, against 14 per cent for the competing ports in Shenzhen just north of Hong Kong on the mainland.
The new threat has led to renewed calls for Hong Kong to work with the mainland authorities to change regulations that Hong Kong companies blame for driving up their costs.
"The cost difference is making Hong Kong really not competitive," Alan Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Container Terminal Operators' Association, said. "If we do not do anything about that, I see the growth in Hong Kong in the near future will be slow or zero."
The new challenge is also increasing Hong Kong's dependence on its remaining differences from the mainland, most significantly its straightforward customs regime. Because of mainland China's obstructive and bureaucratic customs service, it is far easier to use Hong Kong than the mainland to consolidate into larger loads for export goods made in different parts of China. Mainland customs can also hamper international trans-shipment operations.
"If tomorrow Chinese customs changed to be as good as Hong Kong customs, I think Hong Kong's logistics business would be dead the next day," Mr Lee said.
The new threat results from major container port expansion programmes at Shekou and Chiwan on the east bank of the Pearl River Delta in Shenzhen and construction of a huge new port at Da Chan Bay in the same region. The expansions should for the first time give Shenzhen ports spare capacity to pursue international trans-shipment work.
Allen Tu, senior manager in the business development department at Shekou Container Terminals, said Shekou planned a marketing push to seek international trans-shipment. To encourage traffic, the terminal was considering setting up a barge service between Shekou and Vietnam's fast-growing Ho Chi Minh City. Despite Hong Kong's advantages, the port could win business from the many international shipping lines that already use Shekou for import-export business, according to Mr Tu. "If customers use Shekou, they may at least have alternatives [to Hong Kong] and we do also have an advantage on cost," he said.
Hong Kong terminal operators - the largest of which is Hong Kong International Terminals - have long lobbied for a relaxation of burdensome cross-border trucking rules.
The rules allow only higher-paid Hong Kong-based drivers to cross the border and force drivers always to take the same truck both ways on a trip. The operators' association estimates the rules impose an extra $100 cost for every 40ft container moved from the mainland via Hong Kong compared with Shenzhen ports.
However, Mr Lee said Hong Kong faced cost disadvantages through everything from higher land costs to higher wages, even when handling barges coming from the mainland, which faced no such rules. Barges are becoming increasingly important around Hong Kong as areas in the western Pearl River Delta with poor road links to the main ports become more developed.
Besides the customs advantages and Hong Kong's benefits as a financial centre where cargo can be easily insured and secure contracts struck, the main remaining hope was the port's legendary efficiency - among the highest in the world. "No matter how efficient you are, the costs are higher," Mr Lee said. "If we were equally efficient [as the ports in China] we would be dead already."
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FTD.de, 17.05.2007
© 2007 Financial Times Deutschland,
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