Economic activity has slumped in the existing Kribi port and workers survive thanks to the Douala seaport.

The existence of the actual seaport in Kribi now hangs on a balance and if nothing is done to save it, it risks extinction. What is left of the port is dilapidating infrastructure but for offices that idle workers still warm.

According to the Chief of Sub-division of the Kribi existing seaport, Antoine Nguiamba, the outfit was created about 1885 by the Germans and what they have as infrastructure dates as far back as the First World War.

For the past years, the port has specialized in the exportation of wood from Cameroon to China and Turkey. But the activity has dwindled with time and is almost coming to a halt. "In 2008, we had over 13,000 tones of wood but this year, we have not yet attained 1,500 tones", Nguiamba Antoine said. He attributed this slump to the global economic crisis currently ravaging the world's economies and which has had a disastrous effect on the wood sector. It is one of the sectors hardest hit by the global recession.

The other problem affecting the activity of the port is the absence or near absence of roads linking the area and other areas where wood is produced. This, he said, leaves logging companies with the option of carrying their products directly to Douala where they are shipped to countries of demand. "For a port to exist there must be products that pass through it. The problem here is that the port is not opened to external products", the Chief of Sub-division said, adding that wood companies that animated the Kribi port in the yesteryears can no longer do so today. "There is absolute need to re-launch activities here", he advocated.

The few workers of the Kribi port are idle and today survive thanks to the mother seaport in Douala. This has made them more of liabilities than assets to the state. Though Kribi is said to be an autonomous port, its autonomy is just on paper. "We are just a service, we are managed by the Douala seaport", Mr. Nguiamba said.

However, the story might be different in no distant future with government's resolve to rehabilitate existing ports infrastructure and develop new ones. This, with the aim of boosting maritime operations in the country as well as rendering the ports sector in Cameroon more productive and competitive with others in the African sub region.

In a stopover at the Kribi port during his visit to ports installations in the region on Friday, August 21, the General Manager of the National Ports Authority Josue Youmba reassured the population and administrators that nothing would be left to chance to rehabilitate the port and give it the image of the yesteryears.