Bangladesh’s Chittagong Port Authority has issued an emergency circular yesterday on the precautionary guidelines to be followed in order to prevent the spread of covid-19 into Bangladesh, through sea route. The circular states that it will be mandatory for all vessels arriving at the Chittagong port to remain in Quarantine for a period of 14 days after the departure from the last port.
After the quarantine period for a particular vessel, it will only be allowed to enter the Chittagong port, post a physical inspection carried out by port health officer. The strict measures aim to prevent the escalation of the coronavirus disease further via contaminated vessels, at a time when the Nation has been able to restrict the outbreak to limited cases as of yet.
However, considering the heavy traffic of import vessels at Chittagong port and the time-consuming physical inspection of each and every single vessel before clearance, the said decision will heavily impact the scrap and raw material imports into the country, significantly delaying the arriving shipments for up to several weeks.
As reported earlier, March’20 witnessed the highest ever monthly bulk scrap import bookings by Bangladesh steelmakers, crossing 300,000 MT in total volume. The shipments for the same will start from April’20, and hence the length of time for which these quarantine guidelines at Chittagong port will continue, will be critical for the steel industry of the country.
In CY’19, Bangladesh Imported around 3.7 MnT of total ferrous scrap (bulk + containers) out of which 1.65 MnT was bulk imports. This year in CY’20, the total imports were expected to rise to around 4.2 MnT of ferrous scrap.
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