Login

Register




Building capacity to help Africa trade better

Traffic at port of Maputo increase four-fold in nine years

News

Traffic at port of Maputo increase four-fold in nine years

Traffic at port of Maputo increase four-fold in nine years
Photo credit: Macauhub

Traffic at the port of Maputo rose almost four-fold between 2003 and 2012, but the facility and its associated transport corridor still have potential to grow, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reported.

In a recent report on Mozambique, the EIU said that “a lot of progress was made” in setting up conditions to increase goods traffic at the port, which resulted in growth of 275 percent between 2003 and 2012, to 15 million tons of cargo per year, which even so is less than the record of 17 million tons per year in 1971.

Empresa de Desenvolvimento do Porto de Maputo, which is controlled by Dubai Ports World and South African logistics company Grindrod, and state port and rail manager Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, expects traffic to reach 40 million tons over the next six years and expects investments to total US$750 million by 2038.

“We expect business and investment in the port and in the associated corridor to continue to increase, but it will stay at below potential,” the EIU said

The Maputo Corridor includes the Johannesburg industrial hub and the South African provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, which border Mozambique.

Support facilities such as opening the Ressano Garcia border on a 24-hour basis, have yet to be put in place.

“The current congestion at the Ressano Garcia border post has been a significant obstacle to trade,” the EIU said.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in its latest report gave the Maputo Corridor as a success story, but also noted that trade needed to be liberalised.

The level of economic growth expected over the next few years – around 7.9 percent between 2014 and 2017 according to the EIU – will be the result of coal mining projects and investment in new transport facilities.

“Transport, communications, industry and Services, will grow significantly,” said the EIU.

Contact

Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel +27 21 880 2010