Mid September saw Dr Mwakyembe, Transport Minister, replace various TPA Board Members, reportedly to address a rift in the Board but ultimately to resolve inefficiency problems at the port of Dar es Salaam and stem revenue losses. This follows on from a similar \u2018clean-up\u2019 operation initiated by the Minister on his appointment which saw the suspension of top management at the TPA and at the country\u2019s principal port of Dar es Salaam.<\/p>\n
The results are already said to be impressive \u2013 monthly revenue collected at the port of Dar es Salaam has more than doubled, cargo theft including the theft of containers has fallen dramatically and vessel turnaround time has improved significantly. In turn, this represents a major step towards the port of Dar es Salaam competing more effectively with Kenya’s port of Mombasa and capitalising on new trade opportunities, especially those associated with serving the landlocked countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Malawai, Zambia and Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
The agenda is an ambitious one \u2013 in May Dr Mwakyembe said the goal for the port of Dar es Salaam is to boost cargo volume by up to 80% over the next two years. In 2012 the port handled a total volume of 12.1m tonnes and to achieve such an ambitious increase in addition to implementing organisational changes it is estimated that it will be necessary to invest around $1.5bn over the next five years to upgrade existing facilities and build new ones. Works planned in Dar es Salaam through to June 2014 include strengthening and deepening seven berths, installation of a new conveyor belt and silos, and construction of new berths, according to the TPA.<\/p>\n
Also most notable in a development context is that in mid-2013 Tanzania signed a deal with China Merchants Holdings International for the construction of a major new deepwater port in Bagamoyo, located 75 kilometres northwest of Dar es Salaam. The development will also include a special economic processing zone and railway network in a Chinese investment totalling more than $10bn.<\/p>\n
The project includes the construction of a new 34 kilometre road linking Bagamoyo to Mandizi on the main corridor to the east from Dar es Salaam and a 65 kilometre railway connecting Bagamoyo to the Tanzania-Zambia railway (TAZARA), running east towards Dodoma. The first phase development of the port is scheduled for completion by 2017 and will possess new deepwater container handling capacity.<\/p>\n
The combination of the above actual and planned events will, if all goes to plan, dramatically alter the face of Tanzanian port operations. It will, in a few swiftly executed steps, transform the port system from one which basically struggles to keep pace to a system that is in the business of anticipating user needs and meeting them in a timely way. It is inevitable that this process will see the wider involvement of the private sector in terms of the operation of port facilities including new container handling capacity.<\/p>\n
The World Bank has also come out with the interesting statistic that Tanzania and its East African neighbours could boost their annual GDP by up to $1.8bn and $830m respectively by taking measures to improve the efficiency of the port of Dar es Salaam. Clearly, this is a point of view that the Government of Tanzania is taking seriously and is implementing measures that go beyond this with the intention of reaping even bigger rewards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A shake-up is underway at the Tanzania Ports Authority as part of broad-based efforts to improve port efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-script"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3868,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3866\/revisions\/3868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3866"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}