Guinea-Bissau’s container port may silt up within 2 years, World Bank says

Guinea-Bissau, Africa’s fifth biggest exporter of cashew nuts, may lose its primary container port within two years as sediment builds up, said an official from the World Bank, Bloomberg reports.Water levels at the capital city port, Bissau, are becoming too shallow for container ships, World Bank Liaison Officer Carmen Pereira said in an interview in Bissau on May 20.


“It’s not going to take much time before it becomes unnavigable,” Pereira said. “There’s hasn’t been one dredging of any single river since the early 70s.”


The port of Guinea-Bissau, a West African state of 1.7 million people, competes with the neighboring ports of Banjul, Gambia and Dakar, Senegal, where unloading costs are one third less due to better infrastructure, Pereira said. Bissau handles 85 percent of the country’s exports and 95 percent of imports, according to a World Bank report.


Built to handle ships holding 5,000 containers, the port currently manages ships with 20,000. Most of the country’s fuel is now trucked across more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) from the port of Dakar, the report added.


The government has expressed an interest in pursuing a public-private partnership to manage the port with the International Finance Corp., a branch of the World Bank.


The state is also working with Angolan mining company Bauxite Angola to build a port at Buba to the south of Bissau, Pereira said. The depth of the port and its distance from the capital mean it may not be a substitute for Bissau, he said.
(Source:http://en.portnews.ru)