Competition between the ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam, though seldom acknowledged, certainly appears to be heating up with each port seeking ways of attracting or holding onto existing traffic from neighbouring landlocked countries.

Mombasa could be said to have stolen a march with the construction of the standard gauge railway, until that came to a sudden halt when the money ran out and construction got no further than Naivasha, west of Nairobi.

Further south Tanzania was slower in deciding also to build a similar broad gauge railway (SGR) inland from the port at Dar es Salaam and initially aiming for the Lake Victoria port of Mwanza, from which lake steamers would carry cargo north to Port Bell and Kampala in Uganda and even to Kisumu, Kenya’s main lake port.

Since then there has been talk of an extension of this railway to connect at the Rwandan and Uganda borders, in direct competition with the stalled Kenya railway ever reaching Malaba on the joint border.

Tanzania is clearly targeting increased traffic with Rwanda and other neighbours, and has waived the full port storage charges for goods destined for Rwanda and the eastern DRC. This, it is said, is to counter free periods of container storage for transit boxes at Mombasa.

The Kenya Ports Authority extended this free storage charges on transit cargo for as long as the COVID-19 pandemic is in existence.

Who will gain the most from this? Obviously the answer to that question is the Rwandan, Ugandan and DRC stakeholders. One Rwanda importer told a local newspaper that he will use the corridor that is most cost-effective.

Meanwhile, both ports have announced they will auction overstayed and unclaimed containers, with Tanzania Ports Authority waiving accumulated storage charges on approximately 2000 unclaimed containers that arrived in the Dar es Salaam port between December 2019 and May 2020. The majority of these were ordered by importers in neighbouring countries but not claimed following the onset of the pandemic.

TPA director-general Deusdedit Kakoko said by waiving these charges TPA aimed at furthering relationships with Rwandan clients and extending this advantage into the DRC because most of the imports would have to travel to the DRC via Rwanda.

There is no indication that the Kenya Ports Authority intends following suit with waiving demurrage costs but that may yet change.

This item first appeared in www.africaports.co.za  on 1 August 2020

and appears here by kind permission of the Editor

Africa Ports & Ships ©.