ARTA (Halbeeg News) – The Djibouti ports have the capacity to handle Ethiopia’s import and export shipment, Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority.
Djibouti has been in the lucrative position of offering landlocked Ethiopia its only access to the sea since Ethiopia went to war with Eritrea next door in 1998.
Hassan Abdillahi Waberi, an official Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority told the Ethiopian Herald the that the tiny country in the horn of Africa was ready to provide its neighbouring Ethiopia seamless service for the existing traffic.
He said Djibouti ports have the accumulated capacity of transporting 50 million tons of cargo per year while Ethiopia’s current import-export traffic is 18.5 million tons.
The representative said that the congestion is created due to peak shipping seasons among the business community. The arrival of larger quantities of cargo in Djibouti ports within short period and unloading cargo ships quickly and efficiently has become more of a challenge for the longshoremen working on the docks.
“Even the Port of Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe, could be congested if huge cargos flooded the terminals and the deployments of Ethiopia’s bulk imports within short time create massive pressures on our port facilities, logistics, and employees,” he said.
Waberi said that Djibouti has been hugely investing to expand and modernize its port facilities and infrastructures in the view to serve the growing Ethiopia’s economy. The country has renovated the old port and built six specialized, state-of-the-art container, petroleum, cargo and bulk ports.
After the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out in 1998, Addis Ababa relied on Djibouti’s main port to import weapons.
Since then Ethiopia’s economy has grown exponentially and with it the tide of imports flowing through Djibouti to the country of 100 million people, which accounts for 86 percent of all goods transiting through Djiboutian ports.
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