By Datuk Ts Dr. Hj Ramli Amir, former President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Malaysia and Vice-President of CILT International for Southeast Asia
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s port congestion has escalated into a systemic threat to the state’s supply chain, with manufacturers describing the situation as a “state of paralysis” rather than a temporary disruption.
What was once a recurring seasonal issue has now become a manmade logistical crisis, driven by structural weaknesses at Sapangar Bay Container Port (SBCP) and compounded by siloed planning across the wider transport system.
Operationally, SBCP is struggling to cope with unprecedented cargo growth using limited physical and equipment capacity.
With only two wharves handling rising volumes, average vessel waiting times have surged from about 8 hours and 40 minutes in July 2025 to over 29 hours by March 2026, peaking at 91 hours in February. Laytime has extended from a typical 5 days to 13 days, and an average of six ships now wait to berth at any given time.
On the landside, poor yard planning, misaligned deployment of cranes and manpower, unsynchronised truck movements, and documentation bottlenecks are compounding delays rather than alleviating them.
These failures are cascading throughout the supply chain. Vessel omissions mean ships are skipping Sabah ports and diverting cargo to Port Klang, forcing traders to bear additional freight and handling costs to bring goods back to Sabah.
Container rollovers are growing as the port struggles to clear scheduled volumes, creating backlogs that ripple into production and inventory planning. Gatein and gateout delays, with trucks queuing for hours, further erode reliability and make lead times highly unpredictable for manufacturers and traders.
The cost implications are severe. Feeder operators have imposed congestion surcharges, effective 7 May 2026, of RM500 per 20-foot container and RM1,000 per 40-foot container for carrier-owned containers, with equivalent US dollar surcharges for shipper-owned units.
Hauliers are expected to add RM200–300 per container from midMay, while logistics operators report a 37% rise in maintenance costs driven by spare parts inflation.
Prolonged vessel waiting times also generate demurrage and storage charges that quickly accumulate when cargo clearance is delayed.
For Sabah’s economy, this translates into a dangerous “doublewhammy.” On one side, global geopolitical tensions are already driving imported inflation; on the other, domestic port congestion is injecting logisticsdriven cost inflation into every supply chain that depends on imported inputs and consumer goods.
Sabah already faces an estimated 30% price premium on most imported items compared to Peninsular Malaysia, and the new layers of congestion-related charges will inevitably be passed on to end consumers.
This erodes purchasing power, undermines industrial competitiveness, and raises the risk of business closures and job losses as logistics operators and manufacturers struggle to absorb escalating costs.
Crucially, the nature of the problem is systemic and manmade, not simply a function of temporary volume spikes. The combination of inadequate wharf and yard capacity, insufficient equipment, weak coordination between seaside and landside operations, and fragmented decisionmaking reveals a deeper governance and planning gap. Addressing this crisis through incremental, isolated fixes—such as adding a few cranes or widening a gate—will not resolve the structural weaknesses in Sabah’s freight system.
This situation, therefore, strengthens the strategic case for an integrated transport masterplan for Sabah. Such a master plan would align port development, road connectivity, potential rail links, inland depots, and industrial zones into a coherent multimodal network instead of a series of disconnected projects.
It would also clarify institutional roles, improve data sharing and operational coordination between ports, shipping lines, customs, and hauliers, and ensure that capacity expansions are planned against realistic demand scenarios. Without such an integrated approach, Sabah risks repeated episodes of port paralysis, chronic logisticsdriven inflation, and a lasting deterioration in its attractiveness as a manufacturing and investment destination.
