President Irfaan Ali today said that the high costs attached to shipping and freight are hurting businesses and driving up the costs of food items. He has encouraged regional partners to work in a more collaborative effort to help bring those rising costs down.

Delivering remarks at the opening of the Caribbean Shipping Association’s Annual Conference this morning, the President said Caribbean countries continue to incur shipping costs above the global average.

He said the region remains non-competitive in such an environment and cannot deliver optimally in such circumstances.

“When freight cost rise, the cost of imported food rises, when transportation cost increase, construction more expensive, when the delivery of machinery and equipment are delayed, businesses face higher operating cost and reduce competitiveness. Ultimately, high shipping cost determines the cost-of-living problem for our people and a competitiveness problem for our businesses,” the President noted.

The President told the gathering of regional shippers that more needs to be done to improve the regional shipping network in order for the region to remain sustainable.

“And it is for this reason too we cannot isolate ourselves from other major challenges in the region, we have to support each other in dismantling narco-trafficking—exposing our ports to global criminal networks because all of this, contribute to loss of competitiveness That is why we have to embrace the regional security system,” the President said.

Ali highlighted that another challenge facing the shipping is the uneven development of port infrastructure across the region, as well as port capacity and storage facilities.

He said this issue affects not only the efficiency of individual ports, but also the performance of regional shipping networks as a whole.

“This is a policy problem and if we look at budgets across the region, you would see that this is not a priority at the moment, but we have ports that are not efficient that were built for a completely different era and a completely different commercial environment, we have to address this,” the President noted

Locally, the President said as the country’s economy expands and its trade volume increases, its maritime infrastructure must keep pace with development ambitions.

He said major dredging works will be required to improve access to the Demerara River for larger shipping vessels to come to Guyana.

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