Bright future awaits Tanga Port ahead of oil pipeline

Mikhail Goldovski via Wikimedia Commons - Port of Tanga, Tanzania

Currently, the port serves an average of 700,000 tonnes of consignment annually, thus the figure will go up to 3.5 million tonnes. Port Manager Percival Salama revealed this when speaking at the Tanga Business Forum organised by the Tanzania Standard (Newspapers) Limited (TSN).

He stated that, though the size of the consignment of materials for Hoima-Tanga oil pipeline construction was yet to be announced, it may need about 25,000 trucks to transport the offloaded cargo from the port to the inland destinations.

"By next September, the contractors of the Hoima-Tanga pipeline project will be certain over the size of cargo for construction materials that they will be importing through the Tanga Port," Salama said.

He further stated that the envisaged major cement industry to be constructed by the Hengya Company has assured the port to import over 1,000 containers during the construction.

President John Magufuli is set to lay a foundation stone for the construction of the industry in the near future, which will be the largest in East and Central Africa.

Improving roads and railways critical

"But the question here is how are our roads capable of handling the envisaged cargo from the port? How are we prepared in investing in the logistics field so as to serve the consignment from the port," he asked, pointing out the importance of improving roads and railways.

He went on querying, "How are Tanga residents prepared in exploiting such opportunities, these are questions to ask ourselves and work on them. As we speak over opportunities, these are the ones."

He suggested that Tanzanians should need to embrace the individual's responsibility in contributing to the country's development. The port's plans also include receiving a large part of cargo from the neighbouring countries. He advised the government to focus more on constructing hub ports as opposed to the feeder ports in order to make the ports contribute more to the national economy. "We want to handle a large amount of cargo for the neighbouring countries in the next few years," he said.

So far, he said the port has recorded a growth trend, with the statistics showing that the last financial year its current annual ultimatum performance was 845,000 tonnes of cargo.