Bagamoyo Port construction to start in 2023

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania is set to start construction of the Bagamoyo Port in the next financial year.
Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) director general Plasduce Mbossa revealed yesterday that they will not have to wait further for investors to start the construction of the port.  
“Investors will join us on the way,” Mr Mbossa said during the meeting with the East African Business Council (EABC) board of directors held here at the TPA’s Headquarters.
He reiterated that several multinational companies had shown interest in developing and operating the $10 billion (about Sh23 trillion) Bagamoyo port project.
Mr Mbossa did not disclose the names of companies on the grounds that they were still at the stage of preliminary engagement.
“We are committed to building the Bagamoyo port in an effort to decongest the Dar es Salaam port and attract our customers,” he asserted.   
Official data has it that the Dar port handles 17.025 million tonnes of cargo on the annual basis and the afoot plan is to increase to 30 million tonnes by 2030.
“We are here to support the region. We still have challenges like congestion, but we are doing all in our power to solve them,” admitted Mr Mbossa.
TPA, he said, was checking its legal framework to address challenges that were impeding the performance of the Dar port.
He said they were working with a number of entities that include, but not limited to, Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) and Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC).
“As a country, we are doing our best to improve multimodal transport to offer opportunities to our customers to use logistics at a low cost,” recounted Mr Mbossa.
“We are also working to create predictability when it comes to charges related to storage and demurrage,” he said.  
He also said they were strengthening and deepening berths to accommodate larger vessels.
Currently, the Dar port can accommodate vessels that handle 6,000 to 8,000 Twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), an improvement compared to the previous 2,000 TEUs.
“With bigger vessels, our customers will stand a chance to enjoy economies of scale. We are doing all this (improvement) to attain efficiency required by our customers,” said the TPA boss.
During the current financial year, he said, some Sh10 billion has been set aside for the purchasing of equipment.
Speaking earlier, the EABC Chairperson, Ms Angelina Ngalula, said the private sector in the region was determined to use the Dar port.
She said for the Dar port to attract more users, there should be proper coordination with other institutions offering services at the port so that unnecessary bottlenecks could be addressed.  
“TPA has cleaned its house. But when businesses grapple with a challenge at the port, it (TPA) was the one being pointed an accusing finger,” observed Ms Ngalula.
“You need to develop a better coordination mechanism.”