MOMBASA: Despite of the protests by the government stakeholders about the inhibited growth of transshipment trade at Mombasa port and the violence and problems in implementation of the Kilindini Waterfront Automated Terminal Operations System (kwatos). Mombasa port celebrates the arrival of the millionth container on board.
Last year, KPA resumed the trade after commissioning berth 19 and implementation of presidential directives that enhanced efficiency and created sufficient space at the port. Transshipment is the trade of off-loading a container from one ship at a port and loading it onto another ship to be further carried to the final port of discharge. Mombasa handles goods destined to other ports like ports of Madagascar, Somalia, Zanzibar, Maputo in Mozambique and Comoros.
Due to perennial congestion at the Dar es Salaam port, Tanzania also sometimes rely on Mombasa, where cargo is off-loaded and later shipped in small vessels when the situation improves Statistics provided by KPA, however, indicate shipping lines are still not keen to use Mombasa as a transshipment hub, saying some conditions placed by Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) on the trade are unattainable. Of 16 million tons of cargo traffic handled at the port of Mombasa in 2007, transshipment constituted about 480,000 tones or 3 per cent. In 2008 KPA stopped the handling of transshipment trade before resuming again in 2012 but even last year the trade constituted of less than 300,000 tones.
