New Mozambique port will go ahead, says minister
Date: 14-May-02
Country: MOZAMBIQUE
The plan for the harbour includes the building of a passenger terminal at Ponta Dobela, which is 20 km (12 miles) north of the tourist resort of Ponta do Ouro and an inland industrial free trade zone adjacent to the Maputo elephant reserve.
The proposed port at Dobela, which will have a cargo handling facility of 300,000 tonnes, is about 100 km south of the Maputo harbour which handles cargo for Mozambique's neighbours.
"Preliminary assessments of the project indicate that the project is viable and it will go ahead, come what may," Transport and Communications Minister Tomaz Salomao told Reuters.
He gave no date for when work would begin on constructing the harbour.
The developers, the publicly owned Mozambican Ports and Railway company (CFM) and the Isle of Man-registered Porto Dobela Developments, have said the port would turn over $344 million a year.
"So far there are three interested investors willing to participate in the project," the minister said, declining to name them.
Plans for the project were first drafted in 1999 but were delayed by protests from environmentalists who called for the project to be scrapped, he said.
The Mozambique Port Development Authority said early this year it planned to invest $61 million to upgrade Maputo harbour over three years to increase the number of ships and amount of cargo it can handle.
Maputo-based environmentalist Richard Fair said the proposed port in Dobela would hinder wildlife-based tourism, adding that the project did not make sense given that there are two major harbours nearby.
"I cannot see how the port will impact positively on the two ports from north to south, namely Maputo and Richards Bay in South Africa," Fair said.
Richards Bay is a deep-water harbour in northeastern South Africa and is about 250 km south of Dobela.
"It's tragic that pristine wilderness area such as Dobela should fall victim to industrialisation. God has stopped making useful places like Dobela, we need to protect those that still exist," he said.
