The ports of Durban and Richards Bay will regain their status as top-performing ports in the gateway to the southern African region if the government follows its strategy to address the current congestion constraints.
This was the word from Dube Tradeport CEO Hamish Erskine at the Durban-based SEZ’s ‘Stakeholder and Tenant Achievement Awards’ on Friday.
Erskine said the trade port had experienced a massive decline in cargo during Covid-19 and was still recovering from the impact of the pandemic.
“We could not anticipate globally how it would hit everybody. We are still recovering. The air services literally ground to a halt and we then went into a period of a huge drop of cargo and passenger volumes,” he said.
“We had little pockets of recovery so it was a bit stop start but it never really gave us absolute visibility. The second challenge was that treasury stopped a lot of our infrastructure projects – construction sites had to be closed and we had to put projects on hold. It has been a bit stop start but we are starting to see ourselves come out of that.”
He said Dube Tradeport was ready to attract a “full array of potential investments”.
“We have built mini factories, we have built some mid-size factories, and even large 10 000-square-metre factories to be able to respond across the whole business environment,” Erskine said.
He added that it was important for the facility to optimise its role in intercontinental trade and international investment in the era of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) agreement.
“We have a free-trade agreement, but when it comes to it on the ground, it is not applied and that can be very frustrating for foreign investors. This has been overstated, but it is true that because of our port location this is the main gateway into the SADC region via the Port of Durban and the Port of Richards Bay. We have challenges, but those are being responded to,” he said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Sona had addressed the issues at Transnet and indicated the direction the government was moving in by inviting private partnerships to run the container terminals at Durban and Cape Town ports, he added.
“My view is we will get back to the number one spot if we do the things in the next five to ten years. It is enormously exciting.”
Among the winners of the Dube TradePort awards for 2020/2021 were:
- Rohlig Grindrod – top export tonnage
- LS Express – top import tonnage
- Qatar - Airline with the top international and domestic tonnage
- Monustep – Best developer award
- Baird Farming – Dube agri-zone award
- LM diapers – CEO award
- Freightan – Top performer using the Dube Trade Port aero service
