Kribi Deep Seaport project: Management team awaited

This will precede the creation of a ports authority for Kribi with clear-cut delimitations.

With technical aspects of the Kribi Deep Seaport already handled, all eyes are now focused on the administration to swing into action for the masterpiece to start yielding fruit.

Experts say a seaport is like a hotel and once constructed needs good publicity by a visionary management for customers to stream in. A series of administrative decisions are expected to be taken for the port to go operational and yield desired dividends.

Creation of a Kribi Ports Authority

Like in Douala, the highest authority of the land is expected to create a ports authority in Kribi to manage the port. According to the deputy Coordinator of the Operational Unit of the Port’s Steering Committee, Hand Bahiol Magloire, “The decree creating the ports authority will clearly specify the delimitations of the port both on land and in water.”

Appointment of Management Team

Once the ports authority is created and carved out, the appointment of officials will come next to whom the Operational Unit of the Ports Steering Committee will officially hand over the port. “The training going on in Mboro is part of the things that we are supposed to transfer, if not, we could have problems. If the port authority were already created, it should have been the one to undergo the training on how to use the equipment in the port. We will transfer both equipment and knowledge and given that the constructor will no longer be there in the months ahead, there is need to have people who can show the ports authority how to use what is there,” he added. The management team will therefore proceed with the recruitment of personnel as well as draft a management plan, hopefully that which can attract investors to consider the port in the export and imports of their goods.

Who Manages The Terminals?

Government had already shortlisted three international container management companies and attention is now focused on who between Bollore/CMA/CHEC group, APM Terminals BV and ICTSI INC will be retained to manage the terminals when the port will be inaugurated.

Double-carriage Road

The Kribi-Mboro access road to the port is just a temporal measure as the project’s plan envisages a doubled-carriage road as well as railway line for the transportation of heavy cargo. A presidential decree of April 8, 2014 authorised the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development to sign a loan agreement with Eximbank China for the latter to loan out 385,808.6 million US dollars (about FCFA 192.91 billion) to Cameroon for the partial financing of construction works on a double-carriage road from Kribi to Lolabe. The Kribi-Lolabe axis estimated at about FCFA 215 billion seeks to ease traffic to and from the port’s site. It represents phase one of the project and phase two will be from Kribi to Edea.

On the ground, clearing work has begun on the Mboro-Kribi path of the 32 km double carriage way and experts of China Harbour Engineering Company say in-depth physical and geotechnical studies are ongoing to seek ways of properly executing the project such that it marches with the design. Engineers say once the foundation stone is laid, hopeful by the Head of State during the yet-to-be decided date for the inauguration of the port, 48 months will be the time needed to deliver the goods.