The Shippers Council of Eastern Africa (SCEA), a business membership organization formed to improve policy and trade environment in East Africa, has recently announced that Dar es Salaam Port in Tanzania was the best performer in East Africa in 2015.
It was announced through the 2015 East Africa Logistics Performance Survey, which indicates that charges for handling a 40-foot container either for import or export purposes at Dar port remain as the lowest ones compared with the port of Mombasa in Kenya.
Charges for handling a 40-foot import container at Dar es Salaam port rose from USD 90 in 2014 to USD 135 in 2015 while at Mombasa port they rose from USD 105 to USD 160 in the same period.
In addition, charges for handling a 40-foot export container at Dar port fell from USD 90 in 2014 to USD 20 in 2015 while at Mombasa port they rose from USD 56 to USD 80 in the same period.
Charges for handling transit import containers rose from USD 85 to USD 95 at Dar port while they rose from USD 85 to USD 125 at Mombasa port.
The only more expensive fee was recorded on handling transit export containers which rose from USD 80 to USD 210 at Dar port against a rise from USD 40 to USD 125 at Mombasa port, but that is explained for higher shore handling fees at Dar port for TEUs, containers of 20-foot equivalent units.
Among other indicators, efficiency of goods clearance at Dar port improved by 18.58% from a punctuation of 2.53 in 2014 to 3.00 in 2015 while Mombasa port improved by 8.33% from 3.00 to 3.25 in the same period.
Regarding communicating information when trade regulations change, Dar es Salaam port recorded also an improvement by 4.53% from 2.87 in 2014 to 3.00 in 2015 against a fall of 4.51% from 3.77 in 2014 to 3.60 in 2015 at Mombasa port.
Finally, regarding fight against corruption, Dar es Salaam port also recorded an important improvement since its punctuation for incidences of corruption and rent seeking activities improved by 62.05% from 2.53 in 2014 to 4.10 in 2015 against a deterioration by 12.33% from 2.92 to 2.56 in the same period at Mombasa port.
Dar es Salaam port is Tanzania’s principal port with a capacity of 4.1 million deadweight tonnage (dwt) dry cargo and 6.0 million dwt bulk liquid cargo.
According to Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) latest statistics, in the period 2012/2013 Dar port registered a traffic of 12.7 million gross register tonnage (GRT) which is up from 12.2 million in 2012/2011 and is expected to reach the 18 million by the end of 2016.
