The Port of Colombo can add far more capacity by moving containers out faster than by building more of anything, Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Dr Parakrama Dissanayake told a workshop in Colombo — putting the gain from cutting dwell time from 11 days to five at 118 per cent.
Dissanayake and Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation Janitha Ruwan Kodithuwakku both addressed a regional workshop on Maritime Single Window and Port Community Systems, reported by NewsFirst in two filings on Tuesday, the second timed at 10.37 p.m. Colombo time.
The capacity argument
The chairman’s case is that the conventional levers are the expensive ones:
“We hardly speak of increasing port capacity through digital platforms like PCS and the Maritime Single Window.”
Against the traditional route — more berths, more yard space, more machinery, more staff — he set figures from studies he cited:
| Change in container dwell time | Capacity gain |
|---|---|
| 11 days → 5 days | +118 per cent terminal capacity |
| 5 days → 3.3 days | +53 per cent yard capacity |
Dwell time is how long a container sits in the yard between being discharged and leaving. Cutting it turns the same concrete over more often, which is why the percentages are large: capacity in a container yard is a function of space multiplied by turnover, and only one of those two requires construction.
The filing does not identify the studies, give their authors or dates, or say whether the 11-day figure is Colombo’s current dwell time or a generic starting point. This desk has not established which. The percentages should be read as the chairman’s citation rather than as measured Sri Lankan performance.
The documentation figures
Dissanayake also put a number on paperwork, attributing it to the International Maritime Organization:
“Going by IMO data, average time spent on documentation at each port of call was 191 minutes.”
With roughly 4,100 vessel calls handled annually at Colombo, he said that comes to about 13,000 hours a year spent on paper-based documentation. That arithmetic holds: 4,100 calls at 191 minutes each is 783,100 minutes, or about 13,052 hours.
He pointed to a competing port in West Asia that implemented both systems and, he said, eliminated 42 million paper document exchanges and 12.7 million port visits. The port is not named in the filing.
The scale Colombo is working at
- Approximately nine million TEUs expected to be handled in 2026, keeping Colombo among the world’s top 20 container ports
- Transshipment contribution to global and regional trade of approximately US$250 billion — a figure the chairman repeated for emphasis: “I repeat that figure. It’s approximately US$250 billion.”
- A further approximately US$30 billion of Sri Lanka’s own merchandise trade facilitated through the port
- Globally, 4.2 million TEUs awaiting a berth on any given day
- At Colombo, 10,000 to 12,000 TEUs waiting for berthing opportunities outside the port daily
The chairman said Colombo performs better than many ports internationally, so the 10,000–12,000 figure is offered as comparatively good rather than as a failure.
What the two systems actually are
Deputy Minister Kodithuwakku framed the same argument from the policy side, arguing that Sri Lanka’s maritime hub ambitions require technological capability alongside physical infrastructure:
“Modern ports require more than expanded terminals and improved physical facilities. They also depend on efficient information management, streamlined regulatory procedures and effective coordination among the many stakeholders involved in maritime operations.”
The two systems he highlighted do different jobs:
- A Maritime Single Window lets ships and their agents submit required information electronically through one entry point, instead of filing separately to customs, immigration, health, port and other authorities.
- A Port Community System enables real-time information sharing among the many parties in the port ecosystem — terminals, shipping lines, freight forwarders, hauliers, customs brokers.
The first reduces what a ship must file to the state; the second reduces what the commercial parties must chase from each other.
The money behind this is already committed
The workshop is not an abstract discussion, and the archive supplies the part the filings leave out. On 16 October the United States announced a US$17 million investment to digitise the Port of Colombo — funding specifically for a Maritime Single Window and Port Community System for the SLPA, with American vendors invited to bid.
That is the same pair of systems this workshop was convened to discuss, eleven days later. Neither NewsFirst filing mentions the US funding, and neither says who organised or funded the workshop, so this desk does not assert a direct link — but the two are plainly the same programme of work.
Not reported
Neither filing gives a timeline for implementing either system at Colombo, a budget, or a procurement status. Neither says whether the US-funded programme is the vehicle, or whether the systems would be built by the SLPA, a vendor or a consortium.
Neither names the workshop’s organiser, says which countries or agencies attended, or indicates whether it produced any agreement or declaration. Neither gives Colombo’s current dwell time, which is the figure needed to judge whether the 118 per cent gain is available here.
Neither reports what the systems would cost to run, how customs and other agencies would be brought onto a single window, or whether legislation would be needed to require electronic filing.
On sourcing: both filings are from NewsFirst, which counts as one newsroom — two bylines from the same workshop are not two independent reports, and this story is single-sourced. A check of the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing, the Hiru News homepage rail and EconomyNext’s Tuesday output found no other filing on the workshop. Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for 45 consecutive days and could not be checked.
