AN additional 46 new specialised container berths costing an estimated US$2.3 billion will be required to meet the growth of trade in the ASEAN sub-region to 2000, a UN official says.
Richard Henshaw, head of the shipping section in the Transport and Communications Division of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said the introduction of concepts such as multimodal transport could reduce the capital required for this expansion by as much as $300 million over the next decade.
''Part of that productivity improvement can come from improved procedures which turn ports into what they should be - an interchange point between sea and land transport,'' he said.
Speaking at the Multimodal Asia Pacific '93 conference in Singapore, Mr Henshaw said shippers should be able to consign their containerised goods direct to the consignee, not C and F (cost and freight), a named port where the goods stop.
''And in many cases goods are unstuffed [from a container], stored, handled and re-handled, awaiting the completion of cumbersome bureaucratic procedures by port authorities and customs,'' he said.
Mr Henshaw said although positive moves were being made in some countries to improve the different tariff rates, the pace of change needed to be quickened.