TANZANIA PORTS AUTHORITY, ANTWERP MULL PARTNERSHIP

The Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) is mulling a partnership with Belgium’s Antwerp Port, which is expected to further improve operations of Tanzania’s ports.

This envisaged partnership, will also enable Tanzania’s principal port of Dar es Salaam adopt best international practices.

Antwerp is Europe’s second-largest port. It is a major lifeline for the Belgian economy: more than 300-line services to over 800 destinations ensure global connectivity.

The Port of Antwerp annually handles around 231 million tonnes of international maritime freight, and is home to Europe’s largest integrated chemical cluster.

Delegation of the port, including its Managing Director Kristof Waterschoot with a company of Belgium Ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Peter Van Acker, is in the country for a familiarization tour at the TPA.

The delegates were yesterday taken through TPA’s functions and its ports, with the main focus on the Dar es Salaam Port.

“We are looking forward to making a win-win partnership with the TPA,” commented Mr Waterschoot when speaking to journalists in Dar es Salaam, yesterday.

TPA’s Acting Director-General Juma Kijavara said the envisaged partnership is based on seeing how to improve the country’s ports, with support from their Antwerp counterparts.

“Through this partnership with Antwerp we are going to make the Dar es Salaam Port have more international standards and become top in the continent,” Eng Kijavara, who doubles as Deputy Director-General, stated.

He argued that increased port revenue collections depended on improved port efficiency, which is a result of improvement in infrastructures and building the capacity of manpower.

Eng Kijavara hinted that they look forward to having partnership in key areas of ports operations, ICT, port facilities as well as improving teachings at the TPA’s Bandari College.

Following the visit of the delegation, which explored possible areas of cooperation, the two parts are expected to sign Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the near future.

So far, he said, the TPA performance was impressive, with increased capacity of cargo handling and revenue collection whereby currently the authority collects between 90bn/- and 100bn/- monthly as compared to monthly collection of 70bn/- recorded in the past one year.

Transit cargo traffic through the Dar es Salaam Port has increased from 5,566,242 tonnes in 2019/20 to 7,801,495 tonnes in 2021/22.

The transit cargo is for neighbouring countries of Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi and Uganda.

To further improve performance of the Dar es Salaam Port, the TPA continues improving infrastructure capacity to handle increasing traffic, avoiding draft restrictions for vessels calling at the port, among others.

Daily News