The Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) has planned to give priority to gearless vessels to call the port as three new key gantry cranes arrived and more are scheduled to reach next month, officials said.
A gearless ship is the one that lacks equipment needed for loading and unloading purposes.
CPA chairman Zulfiqur Aziz has decided to allow 11 more new gearless vessels to call the port whose approval has remained pending for months, they added.
However, the port authority would not let the number of vessels calling the port rise from the present 90, as the gearless vessels will replace the geared ones.
At a meeting with shipping agents on Thursday, the chairman requested them to bring gearless vessels to enhance productivity of the port while reducing ship waiting time.
Mr Aziz told the FE the port authority recently noticed that vessels often come with half of their load capacity.
This means ships having 1,200 to 1,500 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent unit) capacity arrive in the port with 600 to 700 TEUs of containers.
As a result, he said, an increased number of vessels arrives in the port and wait at the outer anchorage for days.
"If big-sized vessels with their full load capacity come to the port, it will require fewer numbers of vessels to bring adequate cargos, and the number of waiting vessels will also go down," he told the FE.
Shipping agents said they fail to bring large vessels with full capacity load because of the draft restriction.
They requested the port chairman to raise water draft near the jetties through dredging.
Chairman of Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association Ahsanul Huq Chowdhury told the FE on Friday the ship waiting time is high because of some operational issues in the port.
He said the discharge of containers from the port yard is slow, with containers occupying a large space in the yard hampering unloading and loading.
"The port authority needs to address those problems to reduce vessel waiting time instead of asking for large vessels or reducing the number of vessels," said Mr Chowdhury.
He said large vessels cannot call the port due to low water draft.
He said the import stage vessels arrive with heavy cargos, which requires lower number of containers.
But while returning with export cargo, these vessels sail with 1,200 to 1,500 TEUs according to their capacity, since outbound cargos, especially apparel items, are of low weight, he said.
Mr Chowdhury noted that when the newly-imported gantry cranes start operations in the jetties having 9.5 metre water draft, they will be able to bring large vessels.
"The cranes will be faster and will be able to handle containers quickly, thus ship wait time will decrease," he said.
The port has now four gantry cranes in operation while three-newly imported cranes are awaiting commissioning.
Three more cranes are scheduled to reach the port by the second week of next month.
Officials said four more gantry cranes will arrive in the port by the first quarter of 2019 further enhancing container handling capacity of the port.
Contacted over telephone, Ataul Karim Chowdhury of Ocean International Ltd told the FE draft restrictions keep them from bringing large vessels in the Chittagong port.
"If we want to bring vessels of 2,500 TEUs, it will need 10.2 meter draft, which the port lacks now," he said.
Mr Chowdhury said the basic problem of the Chittagong port is delay in loading and unloading.
"The authority first needs to identify the reasons behind the congestion at the port yard. You have to develop port efficiency instead of looking into the vessel size-reducing the number of vessels is unrealistic," he said.
Mr Chowdhury said vessel operators always want to bring containers in line with their capacity, but sometimes they are forced to come with fewer containers when they find the market response to be poor.
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