Dar-es-Salaam port gains competitiveness with respect to Mombasa

Currently, more than 95% of Burundi trade is channeled through the Dar-es-Salaam port, a share that is constantly growing. This port benefits since 2015 from a project called Dar-es-Salaam Maritime Gateway Program (DMGP) which aims at improving its efficiency so to support the economic development of Tanzania and of other landlocked countries in East Africa.

According to the Association of International Transporters of Burundi (ATIB), the DMGP project - which is the result of a partnership between the Government of Tanzania, the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA), other public and private stakeholders, and a coalition of development partners including Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA), the former United Kingdom Department for International Development (now renamed FCDO), and the World Bank (WB) through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) - will expand the capacity of the port to 25 millions of tonnes of goods by 2025.

The project also includes the construction of a section of a railway line connecting the Dar-es-Salaam port to the Kwala and the Katosho Inland Container Depots (ICDs), located respectively at 86 km and 1400 km from the port, where clearance procedures are concluded, while from the port of arrival to the ICD, cargo travels under the transit procedure.

A recent article published on Burundi Eco reveals that clearance formalities at the Dar-es-Salaam port became easier than at the Mombasa port in Kenya, where the Burundi transport companies complain about the excessive set of documents required by authorities, including the transporter's registration certificate, the vehicle logbook, the tax compliance certificate, and many others. Because of the fast clearing procedures and low non-tariff barriers at the port, most of containers remain stored at the terminal for a period not superior to 14 days, which means that they rarely attract demurrage charges, which on the other hand have been recently reported by users of the Mombasa port as very high.