Negotiations are ongoing with private companies short-listed to execute the project.

Everything being equal, construction work on the Kribi deep seaport in the South Region will begin in March 2010. Experts say 87 per cent of the survey work (the last study on the site) is already done and the remaining 13 per cent is scheduled to round off in the next three weeks.

Louis Nlend Banack, the project's director, made the revelation during the visit of the General Manager of the National Ports Authority, Josue Youmba to the project site at the close of last week. During the visit, the first of its kind since taking up duty a few months ago, the G.M. said he was out to see existing and potential ports installations in the region so as to adequately play his role as government's adviser on ports' issues.

The project's director reassured Mr. Youmba and his collaborators that efforts are on course to kick-start construction work in March 2010. He disclosed that negotiations are ongoing with private companies short-listed to execute the project and that a company or group of companies retained would be known latest February. He said a committee is currently working on compensation modalities for objects that would be destroyed in the course of the project.

Construction work, he stressed, would create over 20,000 job opportunities and that the locality would need about 100,000 people to manage the place.

The entire project would consists in building a ports complex in Kribi comprising an industrial and commercial port in Grand Batanga, general port in Mboro comprising four terminals (aluminium, container, hydrocarbons and miscellaneous), a terminal in Lolabe for the exportation of mineral products from Cameroon and the existing port will be rehabilitated to continue to ease maritime traffic and the promotion of fishing.

"The project like any port's project will be executed in phases but there will be no stop between the phases", Louis Nlend Banack said. He added that what could be referred to as the first phase, which consists in building a commercial and industrial port at Mboro, comprising four terminals, will need about four years to be completed. "We begin a port with the construction of basic infrastructure. There will also be the putting in place of an access channel for navigators as well as a terminal where ships carrying material for the project will anchor".

Work is afoot on the bridges along the ports sites same as on the rugged road linking Kribi town and the ports sites.