Infrastructure imports and mineral exports have boosted activity at the Port of Mombasa in the first half of the year. The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) has posted 11.2 per cent increase in performance.

The port handled a total of 13.21 million tonnes compared with 11.88 million tonnes handled in a similar period in 2014.

Container traffic increased by 14.2 per cent to 529,000 this half of the year from 464,000 in the same period in 2014.

Kenya Ports Authority Managing Director Gichiri Ndua said imports for the regional integration, improved economic performances, project cargoes and infrastructural developments, especially the standard gauge railway, helped KPA’s performance record an uptick.

TIOMIN EXPORT

“We have seen increases in exports of about 8.5 per cent occasioned by exportation of Tiomin as a mineral which explains to a great extent the increase in entire volume,” he said.

Mr Ndua said KPA projects that traffic at the port will hit 26.5 million tonnes by the end of the year with the port handling over 1.25 million containers.

Due to an expanded cargo handling capacity, the port continued to gain prominence, serving as a bay for offloading cargo from bigger ships to smaller vessels destined for Pemba, Tanga and Dar es Salaam.

CARGO OFFLOADED

Total cargo offloaded increased to 284,000 tonnes compared to 160,000 tonnes handled in the corresponding period in 2014.

Mr Ndua said improvements in the Port of Dar es Salaam and Djibouti does not really worry KPA as they operate on different corridors.

He said Djibouti operates the Northern-Northern corridor serving South Sudan. Kenya has, however, to fight it out with Dar es Salaam to serve the Rwanda, Burundi and Congo hinterland.

“To a great extent we have been eating to the share of Djibouti in South Sudan, areas where we overlap we rely on improved performance so far as cargo off take, service to the vessel, capacity to serve bigger vessel, labour and increased capacity is concerned,” he said.

TURNAROUND TIME

He, however, noted slight decrease in performance as ship turnaround time went up slightly from 3.5 days to 3.7 days.

This was attributed to an increase in the number of days for bulk and barge vessels.

Container vessels maintained an improved average turnaround time per ship at 3.4 days while general cargo vessels improved to 3.6 days in 2015 against 4.6 days registered in 2014.

Teething problems due to the introduction of single customs territory system meant containers were kept longer for 5.3 days against 3.7 days in 2014.

Source: Daily Nation

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.