Labuan Port Authority to take over port soon
Published on: Friday, October 28, 2016
Labuan: The management of Labuan Port will be taken over soon by the newly-established Labuan Port Authority following the extension of the Bintulu Port Authority Act here.The arrangements are expected to be finalised by the end of the year or early next year.Presently, the port is managed by a locally-incorporated Bumiputra company, Labuan Liberty Port Management Sdn Bhd (LLPM). The general manager of the company Abdul Ghani Paijan, in a circular dated Oct 20, informed all port users of this impending development and as a result of which LLPM would also be initiating several strict measures related to invoicing and billing customers.
ADVERTISEMENT
The circular explained that the measures were necessitated to be in accordance to the proposed Authority's tariff and regulations. The four measures spelled out include:- LLPM would no longer extend credit facilities as these had been abused by some clients who continually delayed payments of invoices (in some cases more than three months) from the due date.- Similarly LLPM will also no longer accept bank guarantees for some reasons and existing bank guarantees would be refunded once the outstanding accounts had been fully settled.- All outstanding and current accounts must be settled before any new transactions can be entertained.
ADVERTISEMENT
- All transactions shall be in cash. However, for the convenience of our clients who may not want to carry cash for every transaction, they could provide an advance cash deposit based on their projected monthly transactions.Labuan Port in its early years was jointly operated by the Marine and Customs Departments.
ADVERTISEMENT
Following a tri-party agreement signed in 2002 between the Federal Land Commissioner as leaser and DPML (Malaysian Malay Chamber of Commerce) and LLPM as jointly leasees the two were given rights to manage the port for a three-year term effective from 2003.DPML later agreed to assign its rights under the agreement exclusively to LLPM. Thereafter LLPM has been managing the port till now. During LLPM management there had been noticeable investments and improvement in service but the company had also got its share of brickbats from port users. One of the regular allegations was the escalating port charges which was blamed partly for the high cost of consumer goods on the island. This was denied by LLPM saying that charges of other service providers had been mistaken as LLPM charges.One outstanding feature of Labuan Port is its natural assets of a deep and sheltered harbour. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
Daily Express Malaysia
