Construction of the second phase of the new Mombasa Port container terminal is set to kick off after Kenya approved a Sh27.3 billion(US$273m) loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Kenya Ports Authority says that construction work on the second phase of the new Mombasa Port container terminal will begin in June2017.
Two weeks ago, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta commissioned the first phase of the mega project is now operational with the capacity of handling 6,000 Twenty Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs).
“Upon completion of phase two, four ships of up to 100,000 tonnes will be able to be handled by the entire terminal instead of the maximum one ship of not more than 80,000 tonnes that can currently be accommodated at a time,” says KPA managing director Mturi-Wairi
KPA says that 13.406 million tonnes of cargo were handled in the first-half of this year, compared with 13.218 million tonnes handled during a similar period last year, representing a 1.4 per cent growth.
However Container traffic according to KPA results registered a slight drop of 0.6 per cent with 527,523 TEUs being accommodated by the port, compared with 530,608 TEUs that were handled last year.
She said that the port has been making efforts to attract transshipment traffic in the last few years. But she regretted that the performance has been below expectations.
Ms Mturi-Wairi confirmed that KPA has since formed a multi-agency platform that has been tasked with looking into ways of revamping transshipment traffic through the Port.
“I am reliably informed that the task force has developed an action plan on the activities to be undertaken to recapture this market niche,” she said. Transshipment traffic is the handling of goods destined for other ports, like in Kenya’s case, goods destined for other Indian Ocean ports like Mozambique and Eritrea.
Mombasa Port has been on the expansion drive in a bid to boost its efficiency amid competition from Tanzania.
