KPT lacks professional port management staff

KARACHI - It is indeed true that in third world countries the ports have been traditionally managed and operated on 'gained experience basis without going through a proper management skills, and this could be best illustrated with the example of Karachi Port Trust (KPT) that lacks professional port management accountants. It is a system that can be used to measure how efficiently a port uses its resources, controls its expenses and how profitable it is but due to the inability of Planning and Development Department of KPT it does not have any graduate in port management faculty. The sources confided to The Nation that this nonchalant attitude of KPT will not let it to manage port accounting, marketing and future development of the port in accordance with regional requirements and competition. The sad part of the story is that the chairperson of KPT too hardly has any knowledge of commercial maritime. In todays world, the port management has become essential to deal with port business successfully, sources added. Management accounts is an essential component of the financial control system in all ports, but the deficiency of the KPT in the said sector resulted in the poor condition of all 30 jetties of the port whose maintenance work, or re-construction, has not been done since long. The marine experts said for a port to benefit from its accounting system, it is necessary to isolate specific data and use them, alone or together with other data, to provide input into the decision making process for major input on which to base management or policy decisions for new facilities, for improving cargo handling performances and revision of tariffs. Similarly, the object of management accounting/cost accounting is to regroup the financial data which are collected as part of the ports normal operations, to incorporate data like production, productivity and controllable costs and revenues so as to make it useful for monitoring efficiency and making decisions. The management accounting differs in many ways to the general accounting like in management accounting systems the classification is according to the activity to which they contribute. It is designed to determine the profitability of each major activity within the port and concentrate on the preparation of comparable cost and revenue data for each activity or cost center, they added. Moreover, management accounting focuses on future costs and revenues. Those costs already incurred which cannot be reduced are generally not taken into account. It combines financial data with operation data to produce extremely useful financial performance indicators for key activities such as towage costs per vessel, cost per container per shipping line. The official spokesman of KPT when contacted said KPT has qualified staff both in Accounting and Marketing, while 'all port infrastructure requires regular rehabilitation and reconstruction, on completion of the life of the infrastructure, which is carried out using the latest technology on the advice of the consultants. However, he said the Planning and Development Department of KPT required qualified staff.