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The
port has its own employees and the truckers
are independent contractors. Jordan Srour,
an expert in port operations management
at the Lebanese American University, says
Lebanese labour law is much more flexible
than that the United States, where the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union would not
allow the extent of the hours that workers
in Lebanon accommodate.
Yet
the quay in question services ships for
only eight hours a day; it is not clear
whether the truckers' union plays a role
in limiting working hours on this quay,
and the union declined to comment.
The
port is now linked directly to 60 destinations,
mostly in Europe, Africa and Asia. Traders
have a wide array of possibilities to export
to or import from. It is market forces,
said Mr Srour. "It's absolutely just
economic dynamics - what people want to
purchase and what people want to import
and export."
Global
port connectivity has been a boon for Lebanese
traders, because companies like Mediterranean
Shipping Company (MSC) or CMA CGM with their
large vessels compete to take volumes to
and from Beirut, so the consumers benefit
from the competition. "Should that
stop," Mr Kraytem asked, "You
will see an increase in cost for shipping
to and from Beirut. We will have [less]
variety in the choice of lines and destinations,
and much longer transit periods."
"We
always have to keep some buffer, [but] we
don't have a place to put one single container,
at the current moment".
Beirut
handles 1.4 million TEU, but excess capacity
is now only enough to satisfy short fluctuations
in increases to volume. A March decision
by the Ministry of Finance's Customs Department
to inspect all cargo and every single container
has pushed congestion at the port to its
limit.
"We
always have to keep some buffer, [but] we
don't have a place to put one single container
at the moment," Mr Kraytem said. Keeping
a buffer for containers as temporary storage
space at the port is crucial, he said, enabling
the container terminal to continue unloading
and loading ships quickly.
The
growth of general cargo, that is non-containerised
goods, at Beirut has remained steady, rising
from 1.8 million tons in 2005 to two million
today. However, growth in container volume,
has risen 324 containers a day in 2005 to
800 a day.
The
World Trade Organisation (WTO) forecasts
the global goods trade will grow by 3.3
per cent this year and four per cent in
2016. intra-Mediterranean container volume
trade is expected to rise from 14.9 million
to 15.6 million in 2015 and 17.1 million
TEU by 2017, according to the Dutch consulting
firm Dynamar.
Container
volume growth roughly mirrors gross domestic
product growth; McKinsey & Company,
a global consulting firm, in a 2011 report
observed that in Germany and France an "average
annual GDP growth of one per cent was associated
with average container port growth of three
per cent."
The
report also notes that port growth is dependent
on its connections to the hinterland - the
Beirut port's bottlenecked trucking traffic
at the entrance has no immediate solution
so a valid question raised is how efficiently
and quickly an increased volume of containers
that port expansion represents could enter
and exit the port.
Port
expansion, Mr Kraytem said, would benefit
Lebanon. Traders will continue to satisfy
the demands of their customers and increased
container capacity might encourage greater
competition among shipping companies to
use Beirut as their preferred transshipment
hub, thus driving down shipping costs for
importers and exporters.
The
profitability that containers represent
also means greater revenue transfers to
the government. But the social implications
on labour at the port, whether a loss in
jobs is likely or not or how livelihoods
might be affected, is an ongoing issue that
might become clearer once negotiations for
the expansion conclude.
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