By Peter Apps
Maputo - Mozambique's rapidly expanding main port has ambitious plans to grab a bigger share of neighbouring South Africa's trade despite poor rail links, border delays and neglect suffered during a long civil war.
Maputo lies closer to South Africa's commercial heartland than any other port and has already doubled its export throughput to 5,5-million tons since 2003.
Maputo's new development company - a joint venture between Britain's Mersey Docks, Sweden's Skanska and Portuguese container operator Liscont - hopes to take a larger slice of trade from ports on its richer neighbour's east coast.
'I think they are worried about the prospects of crime and corruption' "People look on us as a rival to ports such as Richards Bay or Durban," Maputo Port Development Company chief executive Peter Lowe said.
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"But the reality is that most of these ports are full to capacity and have no room to expand. We do. I would hope for us to be doing 10 to 12 million tons a year before long."
South Africa - a growing exporter of minerals and agricultural produce - has launched an infrastructure spending drive, including on ports, partly to reduce transport costs which stand at 14 percent of gross domestic product.
Maputo still has a long way to go.
Half sunken hulks of merchant ships still litter the edge of the channel leading into the port, while overturned railway wagons are scattered along its shores, relics of neglect and mismanagement during a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992.
But in redeveloped parts of the port, around two merchant ships a day arrive with goods for Mozambique - one of the fastest growing economies in Africa - and its neighbours and load mainly South African raw materials, products and crops.
Some shipbrokers say producers are already moving in droves from overcrowded Durban.
"Some of my clients will certainly switch their exports there," one broker said. "For people mining in the north of South Africa it's the nearest place."
South African exporters already send sugar, ferrochrome, coal, steel and tropical fruits through Maputo.
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