Barbara Mommen, chief executive officer of the Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative, talks about the development of this key strategic transit route.
The Maputo Development Corridor (MDC) was launched as a Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) in 1996 as the governments of South Africa and Mozambique sought to rebuild their economies and restore trade and investment ties. Both governments agreed on the enormous potential benefits of rehabilitating the key elements of this vital strategic transport corridor which links the Port of Maputo with Africa’s most vibrant economic hub, the city of Johannesburg. SDI was the chosen means to maximise investment in the potential of the Corridor and fulfil the inherent promise of sustainable economic and social development along its length and hinterland.
The Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI) is a non-profit organisation which exists to translate this vision into reality. MCLI brings together infrastructure investors, service providers and stakeholders from Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland who have a common interest in the promotion and further development of the MDC as the region's primary logistics transportation route.
“Our focus is to support the Initiative from a broad framework perspective by providing a platform for inward investment in the Corridor,” explains Barbara Mommen, CEO of MCLI. “We know that the future of the Corridor lies in achieving transit cargo efficiencies and in growing general levels. Our contribution is to co-ordinate a stakeholder partnership that can remove barriers along the Corridor, keep everyone involved and up-to-date with all relevant developments and to market the Corridor’s strategic benefits and opportunities, so making the MDC the first choice for both the region’s importers and exporters.
“MCLI is in a unique position in that we are not profit-focused,” she continues. “Our work consists entirely of bringing efficiencies to the Corridor—and because we are an NGO we can draw in the widest possible range of stakeholders, not just those partners concerned with logistics, but also those who serve user interests.”
She explains that before MCLI was founded in 2003, development of the Port of Maputo had begun as a private sector concession as part of a 20-year plan to rehabilitate the neglected port infrastructure, market its strategic advantages to shipping lines and improve the lamentable state of road and rail links with Johannesburg. “There were also huge border delays and then long waits to gain admission to the port itself. The potential of the Corridor was completely unrealised and our original remit was to market the benefits of the port on the basis of distance versus the costs of the logistics chain for products in transit from the north-eastern area of South Africa, and to highlight the importance of the port as a key departure point for the emerging markets of India and the Far East,” she says.
Since 2003, investment in the port has seen $64 million spent on infrastructure improvements related to roads and rail improvements with new warehouses, quay rehabilitation, tugs, equipment and operations. A similar investment has been made in equipment and infrastructure at the Matola coal terminal, and a further $61 million invested in the container terminal in equipment, cranes and infrastructure. The car terminal, the vegetable oil terminal, the sugar and citrus terminals and the ferro slab have all seen radical improvements and a further $20 million has been spent on increasing the depth of the channel to 11 metres. Meanwhile, rail partners have succeeded in reducing the turnaround time of trains from 200 hours to 90 hours on the Maputo Corridor.
“All of these achievements have been the result of a partnership approach,” Mommen states. “Our contribution has been to provide a platform for the public and private sector to develop a collaborative approach and then provide a linkage to take their concerns to the highest levels of government policy-making. We provide a route for the public and private sectors to build and achieve consensus and work towards common goals.”
She goes on to explain that MCLI is currently in a transformative phase and is moving to become a much more structured public-private partnership. “This will enable us to increase the role and level of government involvement in the development of the Corridor, particularly with issues such as border controls,” she states.
“We want to raise the profile of the Corridor in the SADC region generally, but particularly with the government of Swaziland. Our priorities at present are to provide concrete information to stakeholders, map the supply chain more accurately and address transit cargo issues and markets from Maputo throughout the SADC region. At the moment, we face the challenge that transit movements along the Corridor tend to be one-directional from South Africa to Mozambique. We need to see much more growth in bi-directional cargo movements and general growth of the Corridor as a key route throughout the SADC region.”
As the Maputo Corridor matures, Mommen is seeing a renewed emphasis on growth, with many aspects of the Corridor witnessing investment in additional services, improvements in systems and processes and greater awareness of the need for collaboration and partnership. The port’s 20-year Masterplan already envisages projected cargo volumes to reach 48.6 million tonnes by 2030; and the MDC has had its port concession extended to 2043—a clear indication that the private-public partnership arrangement is a successful model for investment and development.
“The MDC has enormous opportunities for growth and this potential brings with it an important push towards greater liberalisation, greater unification, and a deeper sense of regional integration and greater trade facilitation than ever before,” states Mommen. “The AU, COMESA, SADC and NEPAD principle of regional integration is one of the aspects that this region has managed to get right in many ways, because of the significant investment in infrastructure over the past decade.
“As such, the MDC is playing a vital role in making regional integration a reality and in contributing to increased trade and investment in the region,” she concludes.
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