By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

THE management of the Port Authority of Guam is planning to ask the PAG board for authority to implement a fuel surcharge to recover its increasing fuel costs.
PAG public information officer Mike Henderson said the port’s fuel costs have increased more than 300 percent since 2000.
“Just like the shipping companies, our fuel costs have skyrocketed. But unlike them, we have not had a fuel surcharge,” Henderson said.
Matson Navigation and Horizon Lines are implementing a 2 percent increase in their fuel surcharges beginning this month due to the higher cost of bunker fuel.
According to the shipping companies, the increases are necessary to defray not only increases in vessel bunker fuels but also increases in the cost of fuel required to power yard equipment, tractors and other shore side equipment.
The fuel surcharge that PAG is asking for is on top of four new port tariff charges, an increase in transshipment rates, and a 15 percent increase in labor “charge out” rates that the PAG board has already approved.
But Henderson said local businesses should not worry because the tariff increases will affect mostly “transshipments” or cargo that only pass through Guam’s port and are not disseminated to the local markets.
Earlier, island businesses expressed concern that the port’s new tariff and the shipping companies’ new fuel surcharges might drive up the costs of shipping goods into Guam.
“We are only recouping our operational costs,” Henderson said.
The increase in labor rates, for instance, is to pay for the additional personnel and man hours that the port has been forced to allot due to more stringent port security rules promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security.
For some cargo, the increase in tariff is only $8 per container.
In the meantime, Henderson said the Guam port continues to increase the efficiency of its operations to offset its costs.
He said efficiency is expected to increase further in the port with the arrival of a mobile crane from Singapore that has been delayed due to bad weather.
The mobile crane is now expected to arrive by Jan. 25 or the end of the month at the latest. Henderson said no special equipment would be needed to unload the mobile crane since the ship carrying it has special equipment that can handle the job.