By George Psyllides
IMPORTERS of electrical appliances on Wednesday accused the ports authority of profiteering and stifling their business by imposing high tariffs.
“We are asking for these general port rights to be immediately scrapped,” the head of the association Othon Theodoulou told the Cyprus Mail.
Importers are accusing the ports authority of charging disproportionately high fees on five categories of electrical appliances that have nothing to do with their weight, size, or value.
According to the association, while a shipping container full of goods not included in the categories in question costs around €73 to unload, the same container – of the same weight – filled with water dispensers, for example, would cost €3,060 because they are charged by the unit.
The same amount will also be paid if the container were to be re-exported.
“To unload and then reload a container, the ports authority charges an amount that is close to its value,” the association said in a July 5 letter to the ministers of commerce, finance, and communications.
Additional charges are paid to porters for the container to be transferred to the storage area.
These general port rights are inevitably transferred onto Cypriot consumers, which pay higher prices than elsewhere.
However, they also hinder trade, according to the association.
The sector used to do a lot of re-exporting in the Middle East and the Balkans in past decades, “an activity that has virtually disappeared because of an unfair and irrational way of imposing charges.”
Theodoulou said Cypriot importers have been recently approached to take over the supply of electrical appliances in neighbouring countries because the instability there discouraged foreign suppliers from sending their own staff.
The charges however are prohibitive.
“The ports authority cannot continue to profiteer unimpeded on the backs of a category of businesses and obstruct them from developing their potential for the good of the country’s economy amid these difficult conditions and on the other hand boast that it is a profitable organisation with surpluses,” the association said.
The ports authority, a semi-state organisation, had on several occasions lent the state money. It is also one of three semi-state entities that could be privatised as part of the terms of the island’s bailout.
