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.
"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."
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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.
The developers have dredged the channel, outfitting a dredger that can also be used to boost the capacity of Mozambique's other ports of Beira and Nacala, key outlets for Malawi and Zimbabwe.
They say their investment has also created jobs and boosted Mozambique's economy, which grew by 8 percent last year.
"This will be the car terminal," says Lowe, gesturing towards derelict sheds - some still bearing the legend "Vivo O Marxismo Leninismo" (Long live Marxism and Leninism).
"We've already developed plans. We could shift 45 000 a year. But at the moment we can't."
For carmakers in South Africa to profitably move cars through Maputo, they would need to send car transporters with two drivers on 18 hour round trips, Lowe said.
The road to Maputo from Johannesburg is good, but the border is only open between 7am and 6pm to commercial traffic, forcing trucks to wait overnight and making the cost prohibitive.
"I think they are worried about the prospects of crime and corruption if the border was open 24 hours," said Lowe, who previously managed the English port of Liverpool.
"They were talking about needing more than 20 extra vehicles to patrol it. But that it no way adds up to the loss of business from the border not being open 24 hours."
Even more serious is the poor state of the railway which follows the road between South Africa's Gauteng province and Maputo.
South African state rail operator Spoornet has yet to make promised repairs, which Lowe said could almost double the port's throughput and revenue.
Much of 400 000 tons of ferrochrome handled by the port each year and even huge coils of steel wire have to be moved by road - a much more expensive process than rail transport.
But Lowe remains confident of growth.
"If you look at pictures of this place in the 1960s, they had 10 or 12 ships waiting offshore to get in here. We will get back to that again," he said.
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