REMARKS BY THE KENYA PORTS AUTHORITY MANAGING DIRECTOR MR. GICHIRI NDUA DURING THE NAIROBI BUSINESS LUNCHEON HELD ON 15^TH OCTOBER 2010 AT THE LAICO REGENCY HOTEL.

Minister for Transport, Hon. Amos Kimunya

Permanent Secretary, Dr. Cyrus Njiru

Chairman, Kenya Ports Authority Shukri Baramadi

Members of the Kenya Ports Authority board and staff present

Esteemed Customers

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Good afternoon.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This industry has been going through difficult times. Shipping is gradually recovering from the global economic recession which, as you are aware, impacted negatively on key global players. Even as we speak, many companies are not yet out of the woods. A number of world ports too experienced marked decline in business especially in the container traffic which for the first time registered a negative growth of about 12 per cent. However, I am glad to share that Mombasa Port was among the few ports in the world that registered positive growth.

Performance

Last year, the port recorded total throughput of 19.06 million tons up from 16.42 million tons handled in 2008. This performance represents a growth of 16.1 per cent. Substantial growth was also realized in imports which grew by over 3.2 million tons from 13.31 million tons in 2008 to 16.51 million tons in 2009 thus representing a remarkable growth of 24%. However, owing to the global economic downturn and decline in tea and coffee production, exports declined by 8.8 % from 2.69 million tons in 2008 to 2.45 million tones in 2009.

Distinguished guests,

 It is impressive to note that while global container business experienced a negative growth,  for Mombasa Port, Container traffic grew by over 3000 TEUs up from 615, 733 TEUs  in 2008  to 618,816 TEUs last year, thus registering an increase of 0.5%.

So far, in our 2010 half year performance, positive growth has also been realized. Import traffic increased by 2.4 per cent during the period, recording 8,000,782 tons against 7,816,508 tons handled in the same period in 2009.

However, export volumes again went down from 1,249,874 tons during the period under review compared to 1,300,079 tons handled in the same period in 2009. This reflects a decline of 50,205 tons or 3.9 per cent.  This is attributed to continued stiff market challenges facing major export commodities such as coffee while increased local demand for cement in the construction sector resulted in nil exports during the period.

Operations

There has been also substantial progress this year in our operational performance. Accordingly, container dwell time is now 5.5 days against 7.3 days recorded in the corresponding period of 2009. This is an improvement of 24.7 per cent or 1.8 days. However, the average port time per ship is 4.0 days in 2010 against 3.8 days recorded in 2009. This slight decrease in performance was as a result of increased turnaround time of container, bulk vessels, barge and tanker vessels.

Equipment

In our continued efforts to improve operational efficiency, we have placed orders for a number of modern cargo handling and marine operations equipment. They include;  3 Ship-to-shore Gantry Cranes (STS), 10 Rubber-tyred Gantry Cranes (RTGs), 4 reach stackers, 10 terminal tractors and 2 boats. The RTGs and Reach stackers will be delivered by next month while the rest are expected by August next year. The multipurpose 100 ton mobile harbour crane which has significantly improved conventional cargo operations was delivered early this year. 

Distinguished guests,

Our vision and Mission entails that Mombasa should be an e-port by 2015. It is in this regard that we recently upgraded our ICT systems by acquiring new high memory servers. This has enabled us to speed up our documentation and information management, besides creating a disaster recovery / contingency site outside Mombasa.

Port expansion

To enhance capacity, we have progressed plans to expand the existing container terminal in extending berth 18 by 160 meters so as to accommodate 3 standard size container ships. We have tendered for the works and actual construction is expected to start in January 2011. We are also working on conversion of berths 11- 14 to a container handling facility which - upon completion- will be run privately. In the meantime, designs for construction of the second container terminal are ready and the contractor is expected on site by February 2011. I also wish to mention that the tender for dredging of the channel was awarded by the government and the winning company has started mobilizing resources to commence the exercise by December this year.

Way forward

Moving ahead, we shall continue to supporting and monitoring the on-going projects to their logical conclusion. In addition, we are working closely with other anchor stakeholders to ascertain effective implementation of the single window system whose completion will play a critical role in making Mombasa an e-port and enabling key stakeholders to share pertinent business information on a common platform.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, we shall remain committed to supporting efforts by the government to build a new commercial port and transport corridor at Lamu as an alternative maritime facility for the Country.

With these remarks, it is now my pleasure to invite the Chairman of the Kenya Ports Authority, Mr. Shukri Baramadi, to come and make his remarks and thereafter invite the Minister for Transport to address us. Thank you and may God bless you.

18/10/2010