Patrick Mayoyo
13 February 2008
Nairobi — The post-election violence cost the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) more than Sh1 billion in losses, managing director Abdallah Mwaruwa revealed Tuesday.
Mr Mwaruwa said although KPA is yet to quantify the exact amount, initial estimates indicated the corporation could have lost between Sh1 and Sh2 billion. "These losses emanated from loss of business, using KPA resources to move containers from the terminal to other parts of the port and through waiver of storage charges to importers during the period," he said.
Speaking to journalists at the Royal Court Hotel in Mombasa, Mr Mwaruwa, however, said the port had maintained a steady upward trend in cargo handling performance despite the crisis experienced as a result of post-election violence. Mr Mwaruwa said last year, KPA had operating expenditure of more than Sh10 billion which generated an income of more than Sh13 billion.
"This therefore resulted in an operating surplus of Sh2.5 billion profit before tax," he said.
Last forecast
The KPA boss said the port performance of last year went far beyond projections because whereas they had a forecast of reaching 15,379 million tonnes of cargo throughput if performance grew by 6.7 per cent, it recorded 15,925 million tonnes a growth of 10.5 per cent.
Mr Mwaruwa said in light of the prevailing circumstances, KPA would prioritise plans to create more container handling capacity at the port in order to meet demands from its clients. He said performance so far had been excellent with the port maintaining an average of 800 units a day since the post-election crisis.
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