Are we about to lose control and ownership of the Port of Mombasa to the Chinese? I don’t think so. Indeed, the point in the widely-circulated management letter by the Office of the Auditor-General to the Managing Director of Kenya Airports Authority (KPA), Daniel Manduku, was that since Mombasa port had been pledged as collateral under the terms of the borrowing from Exim Bank of China for the Standard Gauge Railway- the port remains exposed and more or less mortgaged to the Chinese.
And how did we end up mortgaging this critical national asset to the Chinese? It is because during the negotiations, the Chinese insisted that we sign what is called a ‘take or pay agreement’ under which KPA was forced to undertake to consign ‘ a defined minimum volume of freight to the Standard Gauge Railway’(SGR).
