Problem of logistics maritime in Malaysia

Malaysia’s progress on logistics has failed to keep maintain with its growth in trade.Developing countries in this region are now catching up, so faster progress on logistics development will be crucial to sustaining Malaysia’s competitive advantages. High logistics costs in Malaysia derive from low transport infrastructure, underdeveloped transport and logistics services and slow and costly bureaucratic procedures for dealing with both exported and imported goods. The balance among these three varies among countries in the region but in each country, a complementary approach to address all of them will be needed to produce a sustainable improvement in competitiveness.

                In Maritime Issues,seventy percent of Malaysia’s trade in manufactured goods is carried by containers and the use of containerized shipping has increased tremendously. During the 1990s , total container movements increased at least nearly 10 percent a year, with the fastest growth occurring in the ports of Malaysia.

 The rapid growth in container usage represents both a revolution in maritime technology and a significant logistics challenge to economies in the region.Though container ports in the region are becoming more efficient in handling containers,Malaysia cannot keep pace with the rapidly growing demand for berth and storage space. While the capacity of the container fleet on the South East Asia – East Asia routes increased at more than 20 percent a year between 1980 and 2000' the capacity of container berths to handle those ships increased at less than 8 percent a year.Countries in the region, including Malaysia, responded to the shortage by adding new berths, converting general cargo berths to container handling and developing new ports.Expanded capacity requires greater land area for use in container storage and storage yards to handle the capacity still cannot cope with the decreasing amount of space available both at the ports and depots .Not to mention the means of transporting the containers across land.

There is limited scope for further reducing costs by increasing vessel size and the next development is likely to be more direct services from what are now feeder ports. With higher volumes and more efficient smaller vessels, this could overcome the cost penalty of transfers in the hub ports.The start of this trend can already be seen in the slower growth rates of two regional mega ports in this region: Port Klang and Port of Singapore.