A new player will start serving the Davao-General Santos-Bitung roll-on, roll-off (RORO) route and is expected to serve the route regularly.
Assistant Secretary and Deputy Executive Director Romeo M. Montenegro, executive director of the coordinating agency of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), said the shipping company will make a public announcement soon.
“There is also another player, which is hoping to a make a public announcement soon to serve the Davao-GenSan-Bitung connectivity as well. Naa lang sila’y gina-finalize,” he said.
Montenegro said the interest of this new player shows that the market and the commodities have always been there and the only thing missing for the route are ships that would be able to serve regularly.
“That is what we hope later on sa vessel that will be deployed to serve its route and eventually mag pick up siya and eventually maging regular na route,” he said.
The said route is currently facing a challenge on the availability of the ship after it was relaunched on April 30, 2017 with President Rodrigo R. Duterte and Indonesian President Joko Widodo leading the event, in the hope to strengthen trade between the two countries.
During the launch, it used the 500-TEU M/V Super Shuttle RORO 12 of Philippine company Asian Marine Transport Corp. but was put on hold for lack of demand.
“Ang dako na challenge was that when it was launched in 2017 dako kaayo ang vessel na gigamit for that. It was a 500 TEU/ 500- footer capacity na vessel and that route was supposed to be having a market demand of initially at most 100. Sobra ra kadako ang barko gigamit and later on wala dayon naka take over,” Montenegro said.
He said the Davao-Gensan-Bitung route is still existing and serving a special chartered basis only.
“Naa gihapon ang Davao-GenSan-Bitung every once in a while gina-serve gihapon na siya na route on a chartered basis lang,” he said.
Montenegro said with MinDA’s continuing discussion with some of the shipping players, Reefer Express Lines, a Filipino-owned company has started deploying vessels to serve the routes in the BIMP-EAGA (Brunei Darussalam–Indonesia–Malaysia–Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area).
“So Davao to Bitung and sometimes gina-serve pud niya ang other areas particularly Malaysia Labuan and route to Vietnam and in return from Vietnam naa siya dala either rice or semento bound for Mindanao. And during sa times na kinahanglan siya muhapit sa BIMP-EAGA focused areas gina serve niya ni,” he explained.
