Gerald Bareebe & Julius Omondi
30 June 2009
In a bid to reduce risks resulting from the fragile political climate in Kenya, the Tanzania government announced yesterday that it had opened Dar es Salaam port to handle extra four million tonnes of goods coming to Uganda.
Mr Flavian Kinunda, the director of marketing for the Tanzanian Port Authority, told a news conference in Kampala yesterday that the two governments of Uganda and Tanzania reached an agreement to construct the Arusha-Mushoma Railway line which will also open up Tanga Port for use by Uganda and Southern Sudan.
Mr Kinunda said that Uganda is an important market segment and that the Tanzanian government was renewing its presence in the country with a big focus on port services and rehabilitation of the central Corridor transport option [known to Ugandans as the Southern route].
"The Uganda market is very important to us and we are back to re-capture our lost market," Mr Kinunda said, adding: "Dar es salaam has a capacity of over 12m tonnes yet Tanzania alone uses seven tonnes and because of this Uganda will get four million tones daily."
The central railway line also extends to Mwanza Port which is located on Lake Victoria and operates as a 'hub' connecting Port Bell and Jinja ports in Uganda. The lake link between Mwanza and Uganda is served by a fully operational wagon ferry, MV Umoja, which makes three sailings per week.
The new development in the transport sectors between the two countries means that that cargo will be delivered to Kampala from Dar es salaam port through Morogoro-dodoma-Singinda-Nzega-Kahama-Biharamulo-Muleba-Bukoba-Mutukula-Masaka route covering a distance of about 1,700 kilometres and will achieve a cargo transit time of four days from Dar es Salaam to Kampala.
The Tanzania Ports Authority, which has hired a local public relations company, TERP, to carry out marketing of the new transport route among Ugandans, was established in April 2005 and is an autonomous umbrella organisation that manages and operates the ports on the eastern coast of the Indian Ocean in Tanzania and all lake ports, including Mwanza Port on Lake Victoria, which is linked to Port Bell and Jinja ports by wagon ferries.
"There is a strong feeling among the business community in Uganda that Mombasa is cheaper than Dar-es-Salaam Port but that is not true. Using Dar -es- Salaam is $10 cheaper on average than using Mombasa," he said when asked to explain the economic sense of using Dar es Salaam.
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