Operational since 2 March 2018, the Port of Kribi currently represent only one tenth of the project of the industrial port complex. Phase 1 is complete and enabled the start of commercial operations. Phase 2 which aims to extend the current port infrastructure is underway and progress is 25%. At the same time, the logistic and industrial area is undergoing some transformation with a dozen of companies already settled and operating. This progress is commendable, but it should have been beyond that. Hence the working visit of a delegation of the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development led by Pr. Isaac TAMBA, General Manager of Economy and Public Investment Programming, flanked with a dozen of collaborators. The 2-day visit started with a tour.

Patrice MELOM, the General Manager of the Port Authority of Kribi (PAK) and his close collaborators turned out for the event. The first stop was at the container terminal . Eric LAVENU, General Manager of KCT, personally presented the facilities, namely the two state-of-the-art gantry cranes, with an exceptional performance of 25 movements per hour each and an open storage area of 300,000 TEUs. “we will handle 250,000 TEUs at the end of the year and will surely go beyond the storage capacity by 2021.” This shows that extension works in the Port of Kribi is more than urgent. Moreover, KCT regrets that most of the current traffic is transhipment. An evidence thereof is that at the moment of the visit, the vessel on dock unloaded 1,000 containers and only 100 will stay in Cameroon. Eric LAVENU therefore pleads for a major development of the logistic and industrial area so as to boost import and export activities. However, the Port connectivity is the priority according to Michael MAMA, Operations Manager (DEX). “Without access roads to the country’s interior and hinterland, no port can really be attractive,» he argues. The plea was thus made for the rehabilitation of the Kribi-Edea road , in poor condition, while waiting for the resumption of work on phase 2 of the Kribi-Edea motorway.

Phase I of the said highway, Lolabé-Kribi is 90% complete. The General Manager of Economy was reassuring, indicating at the same time that even the railway project is still on the agenda and the government is working on it. Other major stops include the life base of the drinking water supply project, which is 30% complete, and the Tractafric plant ($2 billion investment), which is already up and running, with seven machines assembled and put on the market to date. The Atlantic Cocoa Corporation (ACC), a cocoa bean processing plant with a capacity of 48,000 tonnes that can be expanded to 64,000 tonnes, was the final stop. This 40 billion Fcfa investment has been completed and the first export vessel for by-products is announced for 12 December. In all of these facilities, the constraints raised are similar: insufficient supply of energy and water, in addition to untimely power cuts; poor quality of the telephone and Internet networks; insufficient storage/destocking capacity at the port; etc. Everything has been recorded and attention is now focused on Yaoundé.