CAIRO, April 18 (Reuters)– Egypt will certainly maintain ports competing 24 hr a day, up from 16 presently, to reduce “long waiting times” for deliveries, Transportation Minister Hesham Arafat stated on Wednesday as the nation deals with a problem that has actually cost it countless bucks.

Grain investors over the in 2014 have actually included significant costs on deliveries headed to Egypt, the globe’s biggest wheat purchaser, partially as an outcome of skyrocketing demurrage costs– expenses birthed by vendors if they fall short to discharge their ships on schedule.

Traders claim the high demurrage costs have actually arised from blockage at Egypt’s ports and also what they call a laborious examination procedure delaying their vessels, triggering them to include danger costs of as much as $500,000 on private freights.

Egypt’s state grain purchaser GASC established brand-new tender terms in February to cover demurrage costs after significant vendors rejected state wheat tenders.

Arafat stated the prolonged port hrs would certainly come with no included price to carriers. He did not define when the brand-new hrs would certainly work or for how long the brand-new plan would certainly continue to be in position.

Traders stated under the existing system, carriers can spend for extra time at the port past the normal 16 hrs.

One Cairo- based investor called the brand-new hrs a “good move” to stay clear of added expenses, however stated a lot of the existing issue was likewise linked to an absence of storage area at Egypt’s crowded ports, something the brand-new plan would certainly not remedy.

“Some of the storage areas inside the port don’t have enough space to discharge the whole quantities,” he stated. (Reporting by Momen Saeed Atallah and also Eric Knecht Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Dale Hudson and also Toby Chopra)

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