Heightened tensions ahead of the October 26 fresh presidential election saw container cargo deliveries from the Port of Mombasa by road transport decline by 1,119 Twenty Feet Equivalent Units (TEUs) or 10.37% to record 9,667 TEUs in the week ended October 25.
Deliveries by train dropped by four TEUs, recording 308 TEUs as the same scenario was also witnessed in the delivery of empty containers by road transport which went down by 1,052 TEUs. This was attributed to the withdrawal of trucks from the road by owners in fear of insecurity along the northern corridor during the polls, the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) says.
In a statement, KPA said that during the week under review, 11 container vessels went alongside the container terminals recording ship average working time of 1.82 days. Container dwell time registered 3.92 days. The ships discharged 11,861 TEUs, full and empty and loaded another 12,517 TEUs for export.
“The total container yard population registered 14,438 TEUs recording a minimal increase of 27 TEUs compared to the previous week. The new container population comprised 7,907 TEUs awaiting pickup order, 2,507 TEUS ready for collection and 309 TEUs full exports (nominated/un-nominated).The others included 774 TEUs transhipments, 2,077 TEUs empties and 864 TEUs at the Customs warehouse,” it said.
The Container Freight Stations (CFS) received 823,174 TEUs, delivered to the consignees, 819,604 TEUs leaving a balance of 3,570 TEUs. Imports population breakdown showed that both local and transit bound containerised cargo increased by 524 TEUs and 582 TEUs respectively compared to the previous week. Uganda retained her leading position in the transit market accounting for a total of 4,486 TEUs which was an increase by 460 TEUs from the previous week.
Other transit countries included South Sudan which came up second accounting for 386 TEUs closely followed by Tanzania with 382 TEUs and the Democratic Republic of Congo with 233 TEUs. Rwanda and Burundi recorded 199 TEUs and 16 TEUs respectively. On the Conventional cargo terminal, 24 general cargo vessels wentalongside to discharge 148,861 metric tonnes of imports and loading 1400 metric tonnes of exports.
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According to KPA, the Terminal handled 21,466 metric tonnes of cargo per day with steel recording 28,164 metric tonnes to turn out as the leading commodity during the week. This was followed by bulk maize that registered 27,087 metric tonnes, bulk clinker registered 24,430 metric tonnes, bulk fertilizer 21,031 metric tonnes and bulk wheat 13,273 metric tonnes. Others also handled in fairly large quantities were bulk sorghum that registered 8,402 metric tonnes and bulk sugar at 1,236 metric tonnes. Motorcar carriers discharged 3,156 units of motorcars and 1,000 trucks.
Meanwhile, forecast for the next 14 days reveals that the conventional cargo terminal is expected to receive 15 general cargo vessels that will discharge 317,017 metric tonnes and load 260 metric tonnes. The Container Terminals are expected to receive 10 container ships, to discharge 8,860 TEUs and load 11,153 TEUs.
