Maputo — The management of the Port of Maputo predicts that cargo using the port will rise from the current figure of 7.8 million to 40 million tonnes a year within the next 50 years, according to Antonio Almeida Matos, co-chairperson of the Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI).

To cope with the expected rise in traffic, the port already has 300 million US dollars worth of upgrading projects on the table, said Matos, at a press conference on Wednesday marking the fifth anniversary of the MCLI.

The MCLI was set up to promote the movement of cargo along the Maputo Corridor, and to turn Maputo into the port of first choice for companies operating in the South African provinces of Gauteng and Mpumulanga. The MCLI now has 119 paying affiliates - 47 of these companies are Mozambican, while the rest are from South Africa and Swaziland.

The MCLI, according to Matos, "has made significant strides towards achieving its strategic objective of promoting and marketing the Maputo Corridor as a corridor of choice, and has succeeded in placing the Maputo Corridor back onto the agenda of local, national and international freight and transport problems".

In recent years, he added, there has been five billion dollars worth of investment in improving the key infrastructures - the port itself, the motorway from Maputo to the South Africa town of Witbank, and the Maputo-South Africa railway.

More ships were now calling at Maputo, said Matos, and some were going directly to Maputo from Europe and Asia, instead of calling at Durban first.

He thought the main challenge now was to turn Maputo into a major port for South Africa's imports as well as its exports. Currently most of the wagons that take South African exports to Maputo go back to South Africa empty. "Our struggle now is to turn Maputo into a genuine transit port, catering for both exports and imports", he said.

Maputo is closer than Durban to the industrial centres of Gauteng. Matos was confident that the Maputo port and rail system can compete with Durban. However, there are problems with Mozambican customs regulations: goods in transit have to pay a deposit, which is returned when they leave the country. This measure is designed to prevent companies who are importing goods for sale in Mozambique from declaring them as goods in transit and thus evading duty.

Despite the reimbursement, companies regard this as an extra cost, and the MCLI has raised the matter with the Mozambican government. The government was "receptive", and scrapping this regulation "is just a matter of establishing different methods of control".

The road and rail border between Mozambique and South Africa remained a problem. "There's not much point in having a fast road to the border, if crossing the frontier takes you two hours", said Matos. The delays at the border have been lengthened by the abolition of entry visas by the two countries, which has led to an 80 per cent increase in the number of people using the border posts.

The MCLI has thus been pressing for a "one stop" border post, where Mozambican and South African staff work side by side, processing travelers at the same time. The governments have agreed to this in principle, but the construction of the new border post is many months behind schedule, and it will not be ready by 2010, and the major influx of tourists expected when South Africa hosts the football World Cup that year.

Three years ago, MCLI had supported business protests at the exorbitant fees charged by the Mozambican company Kadumba which operates a scanner for "non-intrusive inspection" of merchandise at the port. The MCLI Chief Executive Officer, Brenda Horne, said that MCLI is still trying to reduce the fees, but respects the right of the Mozambican authorities to hire a company such as Kadumba to inspect goods using the port.

Companies take many factors into account when deciding to use a port (such as the port's productivity and the number of vessels that call there), and so Horne recognised "it's difficult to point to any cargoes that have been diverted from Maputo because of the scanner".

"We need to work with Kadumba to ensure that the scanner fees are seen in relation to the total cost of freight transport", she added.