Airport's poor infrastructure seen as hurdle to exports

L-R: Goods, waiting to be airlifted for exports, are seen piled on the ground and some outside the cargo complex at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka. Poor infrastructure leads to the airport's failure in matching its international counterparts.Ravishankar MirlePhoto: STAR

The airfreight is growing but poor infrastructure at the airport in Dhaka, like an absence of large scanners and inadequate waiting space at the Cargo Complex, act as a hurdle to cope with the rising queue in goods waiting to be exported by air.
"Infrastructure is one of the constraints at this point at the airport," said Ravishankar Mirle, regional manager for cargo commercial operations of Asia and Australia of Emirates.
However, he said airfreight in Dhaka holds the potential to grow because of a steady rise in the imports and exports of mainly garments.
"Dhaka will join in league with Mumbai and Delhi very soon. This is because India is losing out in the garments business to Bangladesh," he said during a visit to Dhaka.
His remarks came at a time when the airport in Dhaka handles nearly 16,000 tonnes of outbound cargo a month, which was 6,538 tonnes five years ago.
Freighters said the volume of goods being handled by air cargo is rising, as exporters, mainly apparel makers, are depending on airfreight to meet deadlines set by buyers in developed countries, such as Europe and the US.
However, small scanning machines, a poor warehousing system, inadequate space at the cargo complex, frequent power outages and a lack of modern cargo handling facilities are bottlenecks to movement of goods to and from Bangladesh, stakeholders said.
Freighters claim that the existing scanners for export cargo are small and incapable of scanning buildup cargo or a whole container.
With the scanners available at present, export items have to be scanned piece-by-piece before buildup, which takes a lot of time, they added.
"Today, scanning is the weakest area at the airport," Mirle said.
"It is not only impacting the airlines, but also manufacturers, buying houses, freight forwarders and everybody involved in the supply chain, because the scanning machine is the first point of entry to the warehouse.”
"It is more than affecting an airline, it affects your country."
In addition, in an absence of a racking system at the warehouse, freighters have to keep containers on the ground or on trolleys. But in Dubai or Bangkok, containers are kept on racks, which are up to 30 feet in height.
Freighters said an automated warehouse is needed.
The Emirates official said people in the supply chain are strained to maintain a turnaround time of 6-8 hours.
"There is a limit to what we can do. We can push ourselves to reach a stage. But there comes a time when they say enough is enough, we can't do anymore."
Mirle said the demand for airfreight will rise as leading global buyers, such as Wall Mart, are sourcing an increased volume of garments from here.
Bangladesh ranks fourth in global apparel market but it holds the potential to become number three or even two, he said, citing the growing interest of the buyers.
The growing export of vegetables, pharmaceuticals and leather goods by air also propels demand for airfreight.
Similarly, imports from developed countries are also rising, spurred by a rise in domestic demand for investment and consumption in the local economy that is growing by over 5 percent in the past 10 years.

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