The World Bank in partnership with two other development partners on Tuesday launched a 596 million U.S. dollars project aimed at improving operational efficiency of Dar es Salaam port in Tanzania. dollar
The World Bank which has approved a 400 million U.S. dollar loan will partner with the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) that has approved a grant of 136 million U.S. dollars and TradeMark Africa, an organization funded by a range of development agencies in East Africa, that has made a commitment of 60 million U.S. dollars.

The three development partners said in a joint statement that the project will involve the demolition of sheds 2 and 3 at the Dar es Salaam port as part of the Dar es Salaam Maritime Gateway Project to improve the physical capacity of infrastructure and operational efficiency at the port.

The project is a Tanzania Ports Authority plan which was a response to the east African nation’s Big Results Now initiative aimed at generating capacity to cater for the impending traffic growth at the port.
TradeMark Africa’s support under phase one of the project focused on enhancing the port’s efficiency through demolition and relocation of sheds 2 and 7, said the statement.

The statement said that it also involved the upgrading of roads and gates to introduce a single way traffic flow system at the port.

The second phase of the project funded by the World Bank and DFID was aimed at the dredging and modernization of berths to allow the handling of bigger vessels to improve the port’s competitiveness in the global maritime industry, said the statement.

Phase one was expected to increase the port’s throughput to 18 million tons by 2016/2017 from 12.1 million tons in 2012/2013, it said, adding that phase two will increase throughput capacity to 28 million tons.
“These drastic changes in the port’s efficiency and throughput guarantee an increase of revenue and other economic benefits for the port and Tanzania,” said David Stanton, TradeMark Africa’s director general.

Source: Spy Ghana

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