Anxiety is growing as transporters ponder the impact of changes heralded by an upgraded Nairobi Inland Container Depot (ICD) that President Uhuru Kenyatta launched on Saturday.
Mombasa county officials led by Governor Hassan Joho have raised concerns over what they see as the national government’s plot to migrate “coastal jobs” upcountry while a section of industry players in Nairobi say the ICD will compound the city’s congestion problem. But officials maintain dry ports such as the Nairobi facility is the way to go as the country looks to improve its doing-business ranking.
“The ICD is just an extension of (rather than an alternative to) the Mombasa Port,” Commissioner of Customs and Border Control Julius Musyoki said. “Nothing really changes as only goods with pre-arrival clearance; those checked, analyzed and found to be clean will go to the ICD.”
Under the standard gauge railway (SGR) freight plan, cargo moved by trains will be offloaded at the facility for clearance by the importers or their agents before they are evacuated by trucks to final destinations.
The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) says 40 per cent of its yard containers will be allocated to the SGR. At an average throughput of one million containers, the ICD could be handling about 400,000 containers per year.
The upgrade has lifted the facility’s carrying capacity to 450,000 units, up from 180,000. The government also intends to build other ICDs in Naivasha, Eldoret and Kisumu in part of the efforts to boost cargo movement.
Mr Joho, whose family runs a Container Freight Station (CFS), however, sees the plan to build ICDs and a series of special economic zones along the SGR line as a plot by the national government to weaken the economy of Mombasa County.
Those who hold the same view argue that by moving a significant portion of cargo out of Mombasa, the port will have a lower capacity to absorb dock workers. An efficient SGR service is also expected to drive a number of transport firms as well as trailer building and repair firms out of business.
The slow clearance in Mombasa has also traditionally created a thriving business for firms which provide storage and warehousing.
At the moment, the CFSs handle up to 80 per cent of the KPA cargo – were established in 2007 as customs-bonded facilities that provide temporary storage to ease congestion of transit containers at the port.
“We have no reason to hold at the port of Mombasa cargo whose documents and risk profiling have been completed at the port of lobby”, Mr Musyoki, adding cargo that requires lengthy clearance will still be cleared at Mombasa.
The Nairobi ICD is expected to shorten average clearance time to only six hours. In Nairobi, a number of clearing agents and private investors say the ICD is likely to become the next source of Nairobi’s traffic congestion problem.
“The ICD is properly served by three access roads which are sufficient to handle the expected increase in volumes,” Kenya Railways managing director Atanas Maina said.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
