July 21, 2025
According to foreign media reports, Bangladesh's customs facility system has been out of order for nearly two weeks, which has made the country's port cargo accumulation and backlog problems more serious and the port congestion worse.
Customs staff said that the customs system can only run for 10 to 15 minutes every two hours, which directly caused a significant delay in the customs clearance process for import and export goods. It is reported that a similar slow operation problem occurred when the system was upgraded in September last year. At that time, the system failure caused customs personnel, customs clearance agents, and freight forwarders to be unable to log in to the system normally to carry out their work.
To make matters worse, Chittagong has continued to experience various operational disruptions in recent weeks. Last week's bad weather disrupted the normal operation of the port, making it impossible for feeder ships to unload from mainline ships docked at the port, and the operation of the container yard was also severely impacted.
In addition, the extension of the Eid al-Fitr holiday and customs strikes have jointly led to the current congestion of berths and container yards in Chittagong, which is extremely prominent and faces huge challenges.
Currently, Chittagong is facing severe congestion. In the past seven days, the average waiting time for ships was about 5.28 days, and some ships may even wait for 8 days. The arrival of the monsoon season has made the port's operational challenges even worse.
