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In Subregional Cross-Border, Re-Export Trade
"WE HAVE A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE"
GPA Boss Says
Gambia Port Authority’s chief, Ousman Jobarteh in an exclusive interview with forGambia News, Wednesday explained some reasons for container delays he connected to bigger arrivals incommensurate to the port’s capacity. The country however, has a strategic geographic positioning in the subregion—a gift we need to maximize to its fullest harvests, the director believes. A textual rendering of Mr. Jobarteh in his impressive expertise is reproduced below:
The reality on the ground is that as I said earlier, the trade is booming because of the political climate now which is more favorable for business. People in the diaspora are with more confidence to send more stuff back home. So, you can see that before 2016, we were having an annual growth of 7%. But between 2017 we jumped to 12%, 2018 20% plus.
How does that impact Gambia’s re-export trade?
We have a comparative advantage as well when it comes to transit and cross-border trade because that alone has increased almost 102% because the relative convenience of doing business in The Gambia compared to our neighboring ports is far more advantageous. You find out that the transit business has also increased down there. It’s an opportunity.
We just need strategies and projects to protect facilitation. But the reality on the ground is that the facility is not expanding commensurately to how the trade is increasing. That’s the challenge we have now. There’s need to [invest in] infrastructure improvement [especially] extending the jetty, acquiring more land area within Half-Die for construction of new container terminals, investment in new equipment, IT solutions.
Actually, what we have done is that some of these investment decisions, we have to be guided by informed decision parameters. So, what we have done in 2018 is we [vet a firm called Real]. So, it has identified the improvement needs for the port from 2019 to 2038. So, it’s a 20-year masterplan.
One of the primary recommendations of this masterplan is that there is immediate need to invest in the expansion of the facility in terms of the jetty for ship accommodation and also to acquire a land area within Half-Die to demolish the residential properties to construct a new container terminal.
There is competition from neighboring ports as well because if you see the development happening in Lome [Togo]…. because of the struggle in Ivory Coast, they managed to increase their infrastructure. So, they managed to attract a lot of trade also to increase their market. If you look at our tariff rates compared to neighboring countries, there are studies done by IFC (International Finance Company). We have one of the most competitive tariffs.
Container delays
What we advise shipping companies, normally, is to consolidate their load factor. For example, a lot of stuff comes from Asia, America, and they transit through Al-Jazeera in the south of Spain and then it gets distributed along West Africa on port-to-port call. For example, the big carriers, when they get containers from America, they try to consolidate them to get them to Al-Jazeera.
So, what we advise them to do is to consolidate their load factor. Instead of sending two ships with 400 hundred containers each, send one ship with 800. It will reduce the delay at the terminal in terms of waiting time. But at the level of the port, we are doing some efficiency improvement. Last September, we dredged the work area, because you know Banjul is a tributary and the hydrodynamics operating the area at times pose a lot of challenge in terms of facilitation because the sand gets deposited along the shores, the ebb and flow of the tide. So dredging was not done for a considerable amount of time. But in September last year, we did some amount of dredging. A Belgian company called Benny International [did it]. [That helped get 60% increase] because before we could only handle three ships at a time. But now we can handle five ships at a time. At the side of the delivery, we’re having get output in excess of 200 containers delivered every day and then we encourage consignees to also take overnight delivery for cargo that is less sensitive to security measures like bulk cargo.
Combating Delays
What we do is try to extend the delivery period. We even encourage consignees like these big importers, when they import, for example, 100 containers of rice and you have to put ten bill-of-laden in one container; we encourage those ones because those require a lot of inspection, physical checks. We do those during the day and at night when you have one importer with fifty containers, we encourage them to take delivery at night because the cargo is homogenous and is one consignee with bulk consignment. That would ease the congestion at the terminal.
Delays of Containers from U.S
Those in the U.S that have small parcels and they send it through a shipper, the shipper normally tries to consolidate all small loads and puts them in one container. You’ll see that in one container you have maybe, ten to fifteen owners of goods. So, for those ones, is under one container but different bills of laden. The clearance procedure is such that the container is delivered to one person. So, for those ones, with the customs process they have to go through some examinations and physical checks and it takes a lot of time.
Re-Export Trade
In fact, it’s one of our competitive advantages because if you look at our immediate hinterland, the markets in the side of Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry and southwest regions of Mali which is a landlocked area, most of our hinterland markets are those areas and because of the proximity between Banjul and Kaye, for example which is about 673km compared to [other locations for the same area] which is by half, but now because there is improvement in the road infrastructure, you have the south bank road stretching between Banjul through to Basse with all the first-class road. And then you can travel from Basse through Tambacounda and Kaye—also on first-class road. So, these are the advantages and also the factories, we’re trying to build logistic platforms in the Upper River region, for example in Basse and Kaur so that we will cut the distance even to 300km.
Inland Port
The director said they were considering building an inland port in the area “so that the Malian trucks can just pick up cargo from Basse and go back through Tambacounda to Mali. There’s also a project to revitalize river transport because studies have shown that it’s more cost-effective and cheaper in terms of turn mile to transport a high-volume cargo by sea than by road. As I said earlier, we’re closer to Mali than our immediate competitor. There’s a road linking in the south bank. It’s a first-class road. You link from there to Guinea Bissau and to Mali, and then onto Burkina Faso. There is big potential to penetrate those markets.”
On Re-export trade Again
We have some strategic advantages—both the location, the infrastructure and generally the liberalized trade that obtains in The Gambia. For example, as opposed to what obtains in maybe French countries. Gambia has a system of direct declaration. So, owners of cargo, they don’t need third parties to the single administrative document through customs process. And another advantage is that the customs processes in The Gambia are operating on an IT platform called ASICUDA Plus +, or I think they have even graduated to ASICUDA ACE. So, you can do advanced declaration even prior to the good’s [arrival]. So, these are some of the few issues that make The Gambia more attractive.
The French-speaking West Africans “have the system of “Transitaire”. Owners of goods cannot just go and do direct declaration. They have to go through what they call Authorized Economic Operators. They’re called Transitaire in French. So even if you have title to goods, you have to go through a transitaire, whereas in Gambia it’s direct.
