Mombasa port attracts more shipping traffic

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

20 Mar 2008

The Mombasa Port has been experiencing increased traffic of ships in the recent past, as importers rush to cover lost time caused by the post-election violence. Shippers said most cargo owners had gone slow on importation of cargo due to the insecurity. They said they feared they could not guarantee the safety of the goods as transportation from the port was a problem, with trucks being burnt and railway lines being tampered with.  On Monday, four ships were waiting to be allocated a berth as the five available ones were being used to clear other ships. The previous day, seven ships were on the queue.The ships included mv Jaspers, mv CMA CGM Victoria, mv Paris, mv Emirates Gondwana and mv AS Mars. Those waiting to be offloaded were mv Global Prosperity, mv Safmarine Cotonou, mv Despina P and mv Red Sea. However, the increased number of ships calling on the port had not led to congestion at the container terminal, as there were a total of 10,435 container units. The container terminal has a capacity to handle 14,000 containers. KPA managing director Abdalla Mwaruwa said the ports authority was keen to have all importers remove their containers from the port as soon as they arrived, since the port was only a transit facility and not a storage area. Recently, he added, KPA nominated the Kipevu Terminal Base to take over due containers after the facility was gazetted by the Kenya Revenue Authority.  At the same time, KPA also appealed to shipping lines to manifest their containers to the facilities so as to ease the transfer. The aim, KPA stressed, was to enable normalcy of operations at the port’s container terminal.KPA also said that the trans-shipment of traffic to Dar es Salaam had been re-accepted alongside others to the Indian Ocean islands.  The ports authority informed the shipping lines that it has, in principle, agreed to remove the trans-shipment bond. A letter confirming the removal is expected soon. KPA had suspended trans-shipment to Dar es Salaam late last year, due to the huge pile-up caused at the port, which was more congested than Mombasa.