Shipping companies may be spared from paying a container surcharge, as the Commonwealth Ports Authority pursues other funding sources for the paving of the Saipan seaport container yard.<\/p>\n
CPA executive director Carlos Salas told the board of directors yesterday that management is looking at floating up to $3 million in bonds to cover part of the costs of the paving project.<\/p>\n
If the bond flotation materializes, CPA will cancel its plan to assess cargo containers entering or departing the Port of Saipan a charge of $15 per TEU, or 20-foot equivalent unit.<\/p>\n
The CPA board approved the proposed container surcharge in November 2004 to generate revenues for the container yard paving. The project is expected to cost between $4 million and $6 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s seems likely that we will be able to float some bonds for the project. Right now, we\u2019re considering the container surcharge as a last resort. But we will not cancel it until we\u2019re sure that we don\u2019t need it,\u201d Salas said.<\/p>\n
Saipan Stevedore Co. Inc. has committed to paying half of the required bond coverage for the project. Under its arrangement with CPA, Saipan Stevedore will contribute about $150,000 every year, Salas said.<\/p>\n
CPA is currently assessing whether to pave the container yard with asphalt or with cement concrete.<\/p>\n
Salas pointed out that an asphalt pavement will cost CPA around $4 million while the more durable concrete pavement will cost $2 million more.<\/p>\n
Aside from paving the yard, the ports authority plans to equip the facility with a drainage system approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Agnes Donato)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shipping companies may be spared from paying a container surcharge, as the Commonwealth Ports Authority pursues other funding sources for the paving of the Saipan seaport container yard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}