TANZANIA STARTS CONSTRUCTION WORKS AT BAGAMOYO PORT AND SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE
The Tanzanian Government has
recently announced that construction works have started at Bagamoyo port and
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Tanzania’s coastal northern region to make
Tanzania a trade and transport hub in East Africa.
The project is the result of a
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2014 between the Tanzanian
Government, the Sultanate of Oman through the State General Reserve Fund (SGRF)
and China Merchants Holding International (CMHI), a Hong Kong based company
involved with port operations, general and bulk cargo transportation.
The Bagamoyo Port and SEZ’ total
cost has not been disclosed yet by any of the MoU’s members, but it is known to
be around the USD 11 billion with the majority being financed by the Chinese
Government through the China Development Bank (CDB). The whole project’s
construction works including the port, SEZ, roads, and railways are expected to
last 10 years.
The Bagamoyo port will be able to
handle shipping traffic from mega deep sea ships with container vessels size of
8,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) with the possibility of being
expanded and is expected to process 20 million containers annually.
The port will also reduce burden on
Dar Es Salaam port’s that is working over capacity with traffic from mega deep
sea ships having increased from 26.0 million gross register tonnage (GRT) in
2011/12 to 26.4 million GRT in 2012/13, according to Tanzania Ports Authority
(TPA) latest statistics. The Bagamoyo SEZ is expected to host more than 1,000
factories and raise the current labor demand 31,923 generated by 130 registered
companies at EPZs, to 500,000 jobs.
0 comments:
Post a Comment