Survey pits Maputo against Durban

How does the Port of Durban compare with Maputo in the convenience and cost of exporting/ importing sea-borne cargo traffic? In an in-depth statistical study titled “Corruption and firm behaviour: Evidence from African Ports” (December 2011) by Sandra Sequeira of the London School of Economics (LSE) and Simeon Djankov of the World Bank, the two researchers collected both administrative and survey data to test their hypothesis of the overall comparability between services provided by the ports of Durban and Maputo. While this article barely touches the surface of the report, perhaps the accompanying table displays just a part of the lengthy section of the study related to the “corruption” aspect. “To begin with,” the report said, “though Durban achieves significant economies of scale in operations as the largest container port in sub- Saharan Africa, most port services are still publiclyowned, with frequent labour strikes and long vessel turnaround times.” However, it also noted that the port of Maputo was privatised in 2004, which brought significant investments in its physical infrastructure. Though Maputo is a smaller port and is still expanding its capacity to handle all types of cargo, berth occupancy rates are much lower at 30%, compared to 100% in Durban. A lower berth occupancy rate means that a freight forwarder is able to bring a ship in and out of Maputo faster than if it queues in Durban. As an important indicator of service quality, crane moves per hour on the docks is similar in both ports (15 TEUs/hour), reflecting the higher productivity of the Mozambican private stevedores against the higher capital intensity of operations in Durban. Beyond the administrative indicators of the quality of each port, the researchers also obtained users’ perspectives on Maputo and Durban as viable shipping alternatives. “In our firm survey conducted in 2007, a sub-sample of 250 SA firms located in the hinterland of both ports ranked Maputo and Durban at respectively 3.4 and 3.7 out of a total score of 5 in terms of overall quality of port services.”