Reopen state warehouses

THE EDITOR: There was a time when warehouses Nos 1 and 2 operated by the state, in conjunction with the Port Authority, acted as a pressure valve in the import system. When goods were not cleared within the tight port timelines, often due to financing delays, documentation issues, or congestion, shipments were transferred to the state warehouses and importers charged nominal storage fees, not punitive rents.

That system achieved three critical things:

• Prevented excessive port storage charges from ballooning costs.

• Allowed importers breathing room to clear goods without financial ruin.

• Kept consumer prices lower, because those added costs were not passed on to the public.

Fast forward to today and we see the same challenges: foreign exchange delays, customs bottlenecks, port congestion, but without the safety net. Instead, importers face escalating port fees, demurrage, and private storage costs, all of which inevitably land on the consumer at the supermarket shelf.

As the old folks rightly say, “What goes around comes around.” The difference now is that the institutional memory has been ignored.

Reintroducing state-managed overflow warehouses, or a modern version of them, would not be nostalgia. It would be sound economic policy, especially in a high cost-of-living environment where government keeps asking why prices won’t fall.

GORDON LAUGHLIN

via e-mail