KUALA LUMPUR (July 17): The Federation of Malaysian Freight Forwarders (FMFF) today said it will leave it to the authorities to clarify on the proposed alternative solutions to the current practice of container deposit collection in Port Klang.

“We leave it to the Ministry of Transport and Port Klang Authority (PKA) to clarify whether the container deposit resolution was ‘merely a recommendation’ or otherwise,” FMFF president Alvin Chua said in response to an earlier statement by the Shipping Association Malaysia (SAM) on the matter.

“FMFF do not know the full extent of the powers of the (transport) minister but we believe that he has the power to make that decision and that decision need not be backed by gazetted law,” Chua said in a statement.

He was referring to the three alternatives introduced by the PKA early this year — namely Non-Cheque Deposit (NCD), Container Ledger Account (CLA) and iCARGO+ — to resolve the issue of security deposit collection.

On Wednesday, SAM said these alternatives to security deposits were “merely proposed recommendations” and “not a gazetted law” as depicted by FMFF and the Malaysian National Shipper’s Council (MNSC) in their past press statements.

Responding to this in its statement today, FMFF pointed out the PKA had on Feb 21 issued a circular on the implementation of the three alternative security instruments in Port Klang, effective March 1.

On the issues of demurrage and detention charges waiver and bunker low sulphur surcharge, FMFF said these matters were not mentioned in the press statements by FMFF and MNSC. Instead, he said the issues were raised during a meeting with the ministry on June 25, which was also attended by SAM.

SAM had also previously rubbished claims by FMFF and MNSC that “shipping lines are profiteering from shippers by imposing exorbitant charges during these challenging times”.

Responding to this, FMFF said: “The woeful attempt by SAM to denounce this claim by MNSC and linking profiteering claims to overall losses suffered by shipping lines, show their lack of understanding (of) what profiteering means.

“Under the Anti-Profiteering Act, it is not whether the company makes a profit. Profiteering is on a single item or SKU that is manufactured and sold and whether the profit margin for that particular product falls under profiteering. It relates to each item and in SAM’s case, to each service that they charge importers and exporters.”

FMFF also clarified that the call to regulate shipping companies made by FMFF and MNSC was specifically directed at “the unfair practices related to landside charges”.

This was in response to SAM’s statement which claimed that “the global direction has been moving towards deregulation, rather than regulation.”