Shippers demand the revision of ports tariff

Representatives of Israel's shipper's council ( ISC) and representatives of Israel Manufacturers Association met last week Mr. Meir Shitrit, Minister of Transport, to discuss ways to revise Israel's "unfair" ports tariff.
 
The Israel shipper's council claims that the present wharfage and port fees are based on the value of the cargo, i.e. the port charges importers wharfage fee calculated at 1.02% on the CIF value of goods coming into the country (The charge, naturally, gets tacked onto the final price in Israel.)
 
Exporters, on the other hand, are charged wharfage fee calculated at 0.2% on the FOB value. This, according to the ISC, means that Israel is using imports to subsidize its exports.
The representatives also pointed out that since there was a differential port fee for imported and exported containers, exporters who rely heavily on imported raw materials, pay higher port fees twice.
 
The ISC offered the minister to study the possibility to apply a revised tariff in which the ports will have a maximum tariff for imported as well as exported containers.
 
The minister promised to study the issue and requested the ISC to prepare a comparative study of port charges in industrialized economies.