Business
Ghana’s oil industry drives port growth
Upgrades at Tema mean that a rig services industry can develop, while the port at Takoradi will grow to compete for regional trade. The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) has plans to turn Tema into one of West Africa’s highest capacity ports and to set up an oil services yard, but shippers maintain that high fees are holding back the port’s development.
A $2.5 billion expansion at Tema and Takoradi is underway. Due to reach completion in 2018, Tema harbour should be able to handle 2 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) per year, rivaling the expanded port of Abidjan. Most recent available statistics from the GPHA show that 822,131 TEUs passed through Tema, Ghana’s main port, in 2012 whilst last year Lagos handled 1.4 million.
With two new cranes inaugurated in January, turnaround time for ships at Tema is expected to fall from six days in 2013 to four days this year. Bidding for the Tema expansion ended in late January. The planned upgrade includes five phases, and contractors will build eight berths.
One of the final stages includes rig repair facilities and an oil services terminal for the country’s growing oil and gas industry. While Tema is yet to begin its second phase of expansion, work at Takoradi started in December 2013. Growth at the Western Region port is already rising, with transit traffic up from 6,000 ton in 2012 to 39,000 ton in 2013.
Total traffic at Takoradi went from 5.3 million ton in 2012 to 5.5 million ton in 2013. Works at Takoradi are expected to be finished by 2016 and are part of a wider infrastructure program in the Western Region, the base for many oil companies operating in Ghana’s offshore. Roads and railways are being constructed to ease the transport of goods across the country and to serve as a more efficient transit point for neighboring countries. The China Development Bank is providing $450 million for the Takoradi expansion. Another €197 million ($267 million) facility comes from Belgium’s KBC Groep. Bel gian company Jan De Nul Group is doing the construction work.
Complaints
Traders are not satisfied with the management of the port. In January, a group of shippers from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger peti tioned the GPHA to drop a transit fee that it charged on some goods.
Paul Asare Ansah, GPHA pub lic affairs manager, says there has not been any official increase in transit tariffs: “There was a new customs officer who had just been posted to the transit yard and was trying to reintroduce physical escort at a fee for selected products like textiles and cooking oil. Ac cording to him, these goods were prone to diversion. The issue was reported to the commissioner of customs who has since ordered them to stop the physical escort.”
Ghana Shippers Authority has received complaints about costs as well as members of state agencies trying to extort money. In December, Daniel McKorley of McDan Shipping Company said Ghana is losing out to Côte d’Ivoire and Togo because of high fees and management problems.
Copyright The Africa Report 2014