The government is being urged to speed up tackling rising logistic costs for exporters and boosting the country's overall export competitiveness.
Ghanyapad Tantipipatpong, chairwoman of the Thai National Shippers' Council (TNSC), said exporters are feeling the pinch from logistics costs, particularly for maritime transport as freight rates have risen on a continuous basis, especially for trans-Pacific and European routes.
"The international logistics costs of exporters, in general, have now risen by an average 30% from July," she said. "This is partially because of a short allocation of containers for Thai exporters, as international shipping lines pay more attention to allocating their containers to the owners of goods from China and Vietnam to serve higher global demand."
The TNSC called on the government to help ease detection and legal actions against high cube containers with a height exceeding 4.6 metres; rev up concessions for the inland container depot development at Lat Krabang; scrap cargo dues for barges carrying imported goods containers from Laem Chabang deep-sea port through the Chao Phraya watercourse to private ports or authorised ports in the Bangkok port area; and speed up planned infrastructure projects covering land, rail and air transport.
The government is also being urged to expedite the National Single Window (NSW) to allow a complete single submission of an electronic document by traders.
According to Ms Ghanyapad, the council is scheduled to submit its proposals on measures to lower production costs for exporters and increase logistic competitiveness to the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking at its meeting today.
In a related development, Ms Ghanyapad said the council is still maintaining its export forecast at a 10% contraction this year under the assumption of the baht averaging 31.50 baht per US dollar, with the continuous rise of food exports and products related to work-from-home benefiting from the Covid-19 pandemic.
In July, Thai shippers downgraded the export outlook to a 10% contraction, deeper than the previous forecast of an 8% drop, due to the coronavirus crisis and the strong baht.