East African Business Week (Kampala)
Phillip Nabyama
21 January 2008
Kampala — Cargo pile up at the Port of Mombasa in Kenya will continue to cause chokes with the expected arrival of some 10,000 containers later this week.
By end of this week, about 30 ships, three of them oil tankers are expected to call at the port currently suffering berthing (parking) delays of four days instead of the internationally accepted one day.
Although the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) has a capacity of 14,300 containers, there are currently about 18,237 containers at the port accounting for 4,000 containers above the facility's holding capacity.
In anticipation of these deliveries, the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) has come up with a sweetener to lure business persons to quickly move out their cargo from the port to create space for new consignments.
For the week January 7 to 11 alone, KPA delivered 1,729 containers accounting for an average of 432 containers per day.
The port has been recording a backlog of 200 containers per day.
KPA that handled about 16 million metric tonnes of cargo last year. KPA announced waivers on storage charges to its customers last week for the days of December 25, 27,29 of 2007 and up to January 3 2008 .
However, the waiver has conditions attached; customers will have to pay the normal port handling charge of between US$200- $300 (Ush340,000 to Ush510,000) and should have removed their containers from the port by yesterday (Sunday).
To further ease the pressure at the port, KPA is transferring containers to Cargo Freight Stations (CFS), a temporary solution that the authority fears if the shortage of long haul truck does not change for the better would only get worse as the CFS too, would run out of space.
KPA is working in the normal three-shift schedule and to create additional space for storage, its staff was recently ordered to remove their vehicles from the staff parking.
The events in Kenya have also distorted the economic and social lives of the residents in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo and Southern Sudan who heavily rely on Mombasa for most of their imports and exports.
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