Reading a Final Disbursement Account from a Bangladesh Agent

The FDA arrives in your inbox a few days after your vessel sails from Chittagong. It's a PDF, sometimes a spreadsheet, usually several pages long with line items in both Bangladeshi Taka and US Dollars. You approve it, transfer the funds, and move on to the next port call. Charterparty wording, bills of lading, claim documents, contemporaneous records and Bangladesh legal advice control the commercial position; this article is operational guidance, not a substitute for appointed counsel or insurers.

Most owners do exactly this. And most of the time, nothing is obviously wrong.

But "nothing obviously wrong" and "correctly billed" are not the same thing. Port agency disbursement accounts, everywhere in the world, not just Bangladesh, contain errors, duplications, and occasionally charges that were never incurred. Bangladesh is no different, and in some respects the complexity of the local charge structure makes it easier for discrepancies to go unnoticed.

This isn't written to suggest that agents are routinely dishonest. Most are not. It's written because owners who understand what they're reading catch genuine errors that agents sometimes make, and they ask the right questions before approving payment rather than after.

The Structure of a Bangladesh Port Disbursement Account

A typical FDA from a Bangladesh port call has several distinct sections. Understanding what belongs in each section, and what the charges actually represent, is the starting point.

Port dues and government charges. These are the fees levied by the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) or the relevant port authority at Mongla or Matarbari. They include port dues calculated on the vessel's gross tonnage, berth hire for the duration of alongside time, and pilotage charges for the inbound and outbound passage. These charges are tariff-based, the CPA publishes its tariff schedule, and the figures on your FDA should be calculable from the vessel's GT, the number of days alongside, and the pilotage distance.

If the port dues line on your FDA looks noticeably higher than what the published tariff; verify current published charges for the vessel type would suggest, ask for the CPA official receipt. Agents should be able to provide this. A receipt that shows a different figure from what's been billed to you is a conversation that needs to happen before you approve the account.

Anchorage costs. If your vessel waited at the outer anchorage before berthing, which at Chittagong is common, there will be anchorage-related charges: anchor dues, any guard boat or launch attendance at anchorage, and communication costs. The anchorage waiting period should match the timeline in the Statement of Facts. If your vessel waited four days at anchorage and the FDA shows eight days of anchorage dues, that's a discrepancy worth querying.

Launch and transportation charges. Launches for port officials, immigration officers, customs, health, and other boarding parties are a standard part of a Bangladesh port call. These are legitimate charges. What owners sometimes see, however, is a launch charge for every official who boarded, including officials who came aboard together on the same launch, billed as separate items. It's reasonable to ask for a breakdown of launch movements and confirm that each billed trip actually occurred.

Agency fees. The agent's own fee for handling the port call. This should have been agreed in advance, either in the PDA or in a standing agency agreement. If the figure on the FDA is materially different from what was quoted in the PDA, ask why. Legitimate reasons exist, if the port call ran considerably more complex than anticipated, for instance, but the explanation should come from the agent unprompted, not only when pushed.

Husbandry and service charges. Bunkers, fresh water, chandling, spare parts clearance, medical assistance, any husbandry services arranged by the agent will appear here. These should all be supported by third-party invoices. An agent who cannot produce the underlying supplier invoice for a chandling delivery or a bunker barge attendance has a problem that needs explaining.

Customs and documentation fees. C&F agent fees, customs processing charges, document attestation, the Bangladesh customs process involves multiple steps and multiple parties, and the associated costs are legitimate. But they should be itemised clearly, not lumped into a single "documentation" line. Know which C&F agent handled your cargo clearance and what their standard fees are.

Crew-related charges. Crew change costs, immigration fees, transportation, hotel accommodation for joining or departing crew, should each be itemised and supported. If the FDA shows a hotel charge for four crew members for two nights, you should be able to confirm from your own records that four crew members were ashore for two nights.

The Exchange Rate Question

Bangladesh port disbursements involve both Taka and US Dollar transactions. Port authority charges are in Taka. Agency fees and some service charges may be quoted in USD. The exchange rate used to convert Taka charges into USD on the FDA is a legitimate area of scrutiny.

The rate should reflect the prevailing market rate at the time of payment, not a rate that quietly adds a margin. Ask your agent what rate they used and compare it to the Bangladesh Bank published rate for that date. A difference of a few percentage points on a large Taka disbursement, port dues on a Capesize, for instance, can be meaningful in absolute terms.

This isn't unusual practice in port disbursement accounting, and it's not unique to Bangladesh. But owners who don't check it are accepting whatever rate the agent applied.

What the PDA Should Have Told You

The PDA, Preliminary Disbursement Account, is issued before the port call, usually based on the vessel's particulars and the expected cargo operation. It's an estimate, and it will differ from the final account because the actual port call will vary from the estimate in duration, services required, and sometimes in complexity.

What the PDA establishes, however, is a baseline. In an illustrative case, if the PDA estimated port dues of USD 18,000 and the FDA shows USD 26,000, the agent should be explaining the difference line by line without being asked. A well-run agency will send a covering explanation with the FDA that specifically addresses the main variances from the PDA. If yours doesn't, asking for that explanation is entirely reasonable.

The PDA also establishes what services were anticipated. If the FDA includes a significant charge for something that wasn't in the PDA and wasn't communicated to you during the port call, an emergency survey, a document translation service, a fee you've never seen before, question it specifically.

Charges That Deserve Particular Attention in Bangladesh

A few categories of charges come up repeatedly when owners review Bangladesh FDAs carefully:

"Miscellaneous" or "sundry" items. A catch-all line for small charges is not inherently suspicious, but it should be small. If the miscellaneous line on your FDA is running to several hundred or several thousand dollars, ask for an itemised breakdown. Real miscellaneous charges, a photocopy fee here, a messenger cost there, should be documented.

Overtime charges for officials. Customs officers, immigration, health officials, attendance outside normal working hours attracts overtime fees that are paid to the relevant government department. These are legitimate, and they're sometimes significant. But they should reflect the actual hours worked. If your vessel berthed on a Wednesday afternoon and the cargo operation was straightforward, a large overtime charge for official attendance needs explanation.

Multiple survey fees. Draught surveys, condition surveys, tally services, these are standard for bulk and breakbulk cargo operations. Where owners sometimes see double billing is when the same survey service appears under both the agent's account and separately in the cargo documentation. Know what surveys were conducted and by whom.

Communication and port radio charges. These are real costs and they're legitimate. They're also sometimes padded. The actual cost of VHF and port radio communication for a standard port call is modest.

The FDA Approval Process That Actually Protects You

The owners who have the fewest FDA disputes are not necessarily the ones with the most honest agents. They're the ones with a systematic review process.

The Statement of Facts is your reference document. It shows the timeline of the port call, arrival at pilot station, anchoring, berthing, commencement and completion of cargo operations, departure. Every time-based charge on the FDA should reconcile with the SOF. Anchorage dues, berth hire, overtime, all of these are calculable from the SOF timeline.

Request the SOF from your agent as a standard deliverable with every port call, not just when something looks wrong. Compare the times on the SOF against the FDA. If they reconcile, you have confidence. If they don't, you have a specific question to ask.

Keep a record of what services you actually requested and received during the port call. When your superintendent sent instructions for fresh water delivery, when the spare parts arrived and cleared customs, when the crew change took place, this operational record is what you compare against the FDA charges when the account arrives.

When to Push Back and How

Finding a discrepancy in an FDA is not the same as accusing your agent of fraud. Most errors are exactly that, errors. Charges carried over from another vessel's account, a calculation mistake, an exchange rate applied on the wrong date. These happen, and professional agents correct them without drama when they're identified.

The way to raise a query is specific and documented: identify the line item, state the basis for the query, and ask for supporting documentation. "Please provide the CPA receipt for the berth hire charge on line 7" is a clear, professional query that any competent agent can respond to.

What you're looking for in the response is documentation that confirms the charge was actually incurred. Not an explanation of why the charge is reasonable, actual evidence that the payment was made to the relevant authority or service provider.

If the agent cannot produce supporting documentation for a material charge, that's a serious problem that goes beyond a simple error. At that point, your P&I Club or your legal advisors should be involved.

Long-Term Agent Relationships

Owners who work with the same Bangladesh agent across multiple voyages are in a better position to review FDAs than those who appoint a different agent each time. You develop a baseline understanding of what a normal port call costs, what the standard charges look like, and what deviations mean. That pattern recognition is genuinely useful.

It's also worth saying: if you work with an agent who consistently produces clean, well-documented FDAs that reconcile with the SOF and PDA, who explains variances without being chased, and who provides supporting documentation without being asked, that agent is worth keeping. The savings from selecting only the lowest quoted agency fee can be illusory if the underlying disbursement quality is poor.

The FDA is one of the clearest windows into how a port agency operation actually runs. A well-run agency produces a clean, documented, reconcilable final account. That's not a high bar. But it's a bar that not every agent clears consistently.