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THE
Philippine government should already address concerns
brought about by making the Subic Bay-Clark Field
corridor the country’s main air and sea transshipment
hub, especially since there is less room to expand
facilities in Manila.
Speaking
before the convention of Supply Chain Management
Association of the Philippines last week, Maria Cherry
Lyn S. Rodolfo from the University of Asia and the
Pacific said government should start extending the Subic-Clark
corridor to central and northern Luzon and market it as
a temporary storage or central distribution for
export-oriented firms.
“There
is no room for expansion in the NAIA (Ninoy Aquino
International Airport) to accept more air-cargo freight
unlike in Clark Field, where it has an extra 300
hectares for development,” she said.
Cargo
traffic in Asia, both shipped via air and sea, was
estimated about 50 million containers per year.
However,
of this amount, only 2.1 million containers are shipped
to and from Philippine ports. Subic Bay’s volume
meanwhile only reached a maximum of 65,000 containers
annually from its current capacity of about 300,000
containers.
Rodolfo,
also a director of tourism center of the Center for
Research and Communications, identified three
“significant burdens” affecting Subic-Clark. These are
automation, standards, and conformity and law-
enforcement procedures.
“However, at this point, aside from the three burdens,
there are other problems that bug the two areas. For
Clark, a concern on capacity most especially on the
passage side while for Subic, there is the question of
smuggling,” Rodolfo said. “Both areas also have to
remove capacity restrictions and let the market players
develop the area by bringing in more traffic as there is
no room for expansion both in the air and sea ports in
Manila.”
She
added that the government has to forge bilateral air
agreements to expand passage capacity in key markets
that matters such as Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong,
Japan and Malaysia.
Moreover, to help the country catch up with its
neighbors, agencies should iron out their differences.
In her
remarks, Rodolfo underscored the confusion on which
entity should regulate sea freight forwarding as both
the Maritime Industry Authority and the Philippine
Shippers’ Bureau are doing the function.
Similarly, she also raised the question as to which
agency should assist in logistics development—the
Department of Transportation and Communications or the
Department of Trade and Industry. |
