News / Congestion at Chittagong as boxes pile up on docks and ships wait at anchor

Bangladesh’s main container gateway, Chittagong port, is grappling with severe congestion and vessels backing up, as the country’s mainstay apparel industry stakeholders navigate multiple supply chain challenges.

According to local industry sources, storage yards at the docks are clogged with import containers, after the pace of cargo clearance took a serious hit during recent extended festival (Eid-ul-Adha) holidays.

Sources said fewer importers had turned up to take delivery of cargo during the holiday that ran from 5 June to 14 June, despite port terminals continuing to operate – although deliveries were down to fewer than 250 containers a day from the normal average of 1,000.

“There was a sharp drop in container offtakes, overwhelming capacity,” one local carrier source told The Loadstar. “It could take several days to normalise cargo flow.”

The congestion has left a large number of vessels, including containerships, spending excessively longer hours to secure berthing windows and throwing out their schedules. For example, the Singapore-flagged Sinar Sorong that arrived from Singapore on 6 June was only able to dock today, a delay of 10 days that would have cost the ship operator heavily in these days of soaring charter rates.

Normal waiting times at Chittagong are estimated at one to two days. Now, sources claim the port has a lengthy queue of vessels to clear – some 100 ships as of yesterday waiting at the jetty side and outer anchorage.

With factories reopening after holiday-linked closures, a rush of backlogged export orders is imminent, which will put additional pressure on port terminals, sources believe.

Meanwhile, amid the tariff fiasco, new trade data seems to suggest a larger shift of apparel sourcing by US customers from China to Bangladesh.

According to updates from the US Office of Textiles and Apparel, Bangladeshi apparel exports to the US from January through April rose nearly 30%, year on year, to $3bn.  In contrast, related trade volumes out of China remained flat, with significant gains reported by other Asian markets: Vietnam, up 16%; India, up 20%; and Pakistan, also up 20%.

That trade expansion for the Bangladesh industry is noteworthy, as its container supply chains have been under pressure in recent months due to a series of border access restrictions imposed by India on transhipment traffic, an issue linked to their strained bilateral relations.

Last month, New Delhi enforced fresh trade curbs on Bangladesh, allowing cargo from there to enter the Indian market only through Kolkata and Nhava Sheva ports – posing a major logistics barrier for Dhaka which sees some $700m worth of ready-made garment exports to India annually.

That pushback was seemingly in retaliation for similar curbs Bangladesh had announced for Indian yarn exports in a ‘tit-for-tat’ for New Delhi revoking a 2020 policy facilitating transhipment of Bangladesh’s third-country exports through Indian airports, especially New Delhi, from early 2023.

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