By Lamin Cham
Just a few months after taking over operations at the Banjul port, Alport Banjul, a subsidiary of Turkish conglomerate Albayrak Group, is already reeling on its success in transforming the port’s facilities, enhancing efficiency and increasing the volume of business.
Inspired by this momentum and leveraging the port’s new found increased capacity and competitive potentials, Alport yesterday designed a diplomatic outreach programme to strengthen trade ties through diplomacy and partnership.
The programme, called Diplomacy Day, brought together ambassadors, representatives and other senior officials from various diplomatic missions in The Gambia to a daylong introduction to the progress of work, projections and future objective of the concession agreement for the transformation of the port.
Led by Salih Levent Kaca, acting manager and country director of Alport, the tour party visited key operational zones in the port including the container yard, cargo handling among other places.
Guiding the tour, Salih informed the diplomatic community members with satisfaction that within the short period of the start of the concession, operations at the ports has improved tremendously. “Efficient and speedy handling of vessels now means that there is hardly any queue of vessels waiting to dock at any given time. This is a marked improvement compared to the past when five or more ships would queue for days causing delays and demurrage charges for sustainers. Customers are gradually returning to send shipments to Banjul directly,” he said.
He added that the area around the port is being expanded to cater for more container holding capacity, adding that once the Sanyang port is ready, the whole Half-Die area would be turned into real estate with shopping centres.
On the planned new deep port in Sanyang, Salih announced that the ground laying ceremony would be done on July 5 and that the site has been mapped out in such a way that the economic activities of the locals is not affected.
Salih said the dry ports planned in Basse and Kaur under the concession will help attract importers from Mali, the south and northern parts of Senegal.
‘We are not limited by borders but people, and there are potentially 25 million people in this catchment areas,” Salih said.
Ousman Jobarteh, managing director of the Gambia Ports Authority, took the diplomats through the logic behind the concessions.
He said the deep sea port in Sanyang will address some of the perennial problems faced at the port in Banjul, such as limited amount of deep vessels and frequent need for dredging.
He said the dry ports in Kaur and Basse envisaged under the concession would revitalise river transport which will be the game changer.
MD Jobarteh said there are enough safeguards for the national interest in case of nonperformance of the concession. “However the signs and realities on the ground since the concession started is very promising, progressive and assuring,” he said.
The diplomats, led by Turkish ambassador Oba took turns to ask questions bordering on safety, capacity, and long term economics and trade benefits of the port under the concession.
