ECONOMY-MOZAMBIQUE: Rehabilitated Port Promises to Lift Tourism

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MAPUTO, Nov 23 2001 (IPS) - The 200-year-old port of the Mozambique capital Maputo is being rehabilitated as a key component in the nation’s recovery, promising to lift tourism and exports the way the Indian Ocean tides raise the freighters in the calm waters at the southern tip of the country.

But when Mozambique’s venerable socialist writer Marceline dos Santos turned 71 this year, he lamented, “We are passing control of our ports over to Liverpool!”

Dos Santos’ remarks about the port of Maputo, of all possible concerns in the country, highlighted the importance of the facility in the hearts and imaginations of the country’s people.

He was referring to a contract given by government to an international consortium headed by the British firm Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, based in Liverpool, England, to manage the port for the next 15 years.

Competition for the contract was stiff, because once the port is restored to its pre-civil war glory, fees gathered from freighters and cruise ships will make the project very lucrative indeed.

The port is in bad need of rehabilitation. Docks are decaying, customs offices are dilapidated, and amenities like toilets are “unfit for human use”, complains Margaret Filhos, a market woman who sells her bananas and coconuts to seamen and visitors to the port.

Silt requiring dredging has built up over the course of Mozambique’s 29-year civil war following independence and the last five years of economic recovery that only now has included this key transport venue.

“The only ships that have been using the port lately have been small, weighing less than 45,000 tonnes. Some are real rust buckets. Concerns over safety have kept the larger and newer ships away,” says an official with the Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC), which has announced plans to make the port the showcase it once was.

R400 million (about 45 million U.S. dollars) will be spent over the next three years to upgrade port infrastructure, from ramps for disembarking passengers to cranes to hoist containers of goods.

At one time, the port was the heartbeat of the city’s life, a bustling place where people entered and left the country, along with most imports and exports, in the days when railroads were few and paved roads were merely dreams.

The colonial power Portugal used Maputo port as an eastside counterpart to the port at its Angolan colony on the opposite side of Africa. Then nearly three decades of civil war following independence in 1975 plunged Mozambique into the lowest rating on the global economic scale as the world’s poorest country.

The port suffered from neglect. But as Mozambique’s fortunes have risen, propelled by imaginative local initiatives and forward- looking foreign direct investment, the port authority envisions a day in the not too distant future when the Maputo port will surpass its rival on southern Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, the port of Durban in South Africa.

It is easier for goods from landlocked countries bordering Mozambique, such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, to use the shorter road and rail links to Maputo.

Swaziland can use either port, which are equidistant to it, but exporters have indicated a preference for Maputo after Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano announced the reopening of long- shuttered customs posts at the Swazi border.

Road and rail infrastructure is improving dramatically between Mozambique and South Africa, meaning that exporters in Gauteng, the province that incorporates Johannesburg and Pretoria, will find it quicker and cheaper to ship through Maputo than Durban.

A high-speed highway connecting Wittbank, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, with Mozambique was completed this year. Once inside the country, it becomes the nation’s first toll-road. Wittbank is in the Mphumalanga province, which for the first time in 50 years exported bananas, 45,000 cartons of them to Libya, using the new road and Maputo’s port.

The South African sugar mill TSB was the first major company to switch use from Durban to Maputo, exporting 30,000 tonnes of sugar through the port. The reason was simple economics: Maputo is closer to the mill, and transport costs are lower.

The R2-billion (about 223-million-U.S.-dollar) Maputo Corridor road linking South Africa’s industrialised Gauteng province with Maputo grew out of a Maputo Corridor Development Initiative treaty entered into by the two countries.

An upgrade of telecommunications links is also underway, which is essential for allowing the monitoring of road freight traffic en route to and from the port.

South African trade officials have made the determination that Mozambique’s economic revival will benefit South African businesses, many of which have already established partnerships with Mozambique firms in agriculture and mining. These commodities are export-oriented, and will require an up to date deep-water port.

Not to be forgotten is Mozambique’s 2,600 kilometres of Indian Ocean coastline, which is still primarily accessed by South African tourists by inland road and European, Asian and American tourists via cruise ships.

The Maputo port’s rehabilitation will enable more ships to dock, and more visitors to discover miles of beaches which are still as pristine as when the first European explorers came across them in the 16th century.

“It’s ironic that the same civil war that kept tourists away all these years enhanced the value of our beaches, because it is so hard to find unspoiled locations nowadays,” says Inocencio Matavel, whose beachfront hotel near Xai-Xai will directly benefit from the Maputo harbour revival.

Back at the harbour, the classic 1911 colonial-customs house, whose giant clock face is a city landmark, has just been given a fresh coating of mint green paint. Everyone visiting the port with a camera seems to want to pose in front of this symbol of a return to a proud past.