The Gambia Ports Authority was created 28 years ago to run on a commercial basis the ports of the Gambia. In order to understand better your activity, can you briefly gives us an historical background of your company ?
GPA was established in 1972, with a mandate to provide and operate any port facilities to serve the public interest and to maintain, improve and regulate the port of Banjul. The facilities were originally under the Marine department from which we evolved as a Port Authority; all facilities were transferred by the 1972 Port Act. The act does emphasis on the issue of public interest because we are a public institution and our actions is a lot on the Gambia public from the economic point if view. An inefficient port will lead to a high economic cost, port congestion and other things, which has an effect on the economy. If it has a negative effect, the people who will suffer the most are the members of the general public, but if there is a positive effect the net beneficiaries are also the general public. It has a direct impact on the economy and the general public at large; this is why the access has to be expedient and the best in the public interest.
Now as regards to the steps we have been taking towards our mandate since 1972, there has been series of infrastructural development undertaken, investing in storage areas, equipment to handle cargoes and to go along with that there have been institutional reforms. The 1972 act had certain provision but as time went on the act made it mandatory on the port to conduct business on a sound commercial basis, in other words we operate like any other business. We are supposed to submit an audit account to the national assembly at the end of the year and also to the government the budget of our activities for the year in accordance with the company's act. So since our establishment in 1972 we have been established as a commercial public company, not a government department but an independent corporation whose financial system is independent of the central revenue. We are 100% owned by the government but the management has certain obligations, it is answerable to the board of directors and the board of directors is answerable to the government.
How has evolved your activity during the past five years in terms of volumes handled and transiting through the ports?
There has been an increase in volumes of traffic last year; we handled about 800,000 tones in terms of export and import according to the total volume of cargos. The port has a capacity of 1.2 million tones. We are moving ahead to update our master plan of the port. Coming back to the steps we have taken, as I said, the first is the commercial aspect of the institutional reforms. In 1987, the Government introduced what we call the performance system which was aim at further strengthening of the management. Targets were set by the government for the corporation and if those targets were met, there were certain rewards and if there were not met there were certain sanctions. Now this was administrated under what we call a public enterprise act, which was enacted in 1989, the objectives was to regulate the activities of public enterprises including GPA, to monitor there performance and to ensure that they comply with government policy. These were some of the institutional reform developments of the corporate culture and it is still in the management and staffs for us to think like business people.
The performance contract that started in 1987 stopped in 1994 and then in 1998 the government reintroduced what they call the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the public enterprises and the government. Both the performance and the MOU as I said are to enhance the efficiency within the public enterprises and each of them sets out what are the obligations and duties of both companies and enterprises. It was a framework that was used to govern the relationship between the government and the public enterprises. In addition to this institutional reform, there were also staff development programs, people are trained up to university level and send on overseas training, and this helped staff members to improve themselves in order to move the company forward. All these were steps taken by the authority to ensure that there is a certain level of efficiency in order to sustain our performance in the sub-region. Within the operation side there is speed cargo clearance procedures and stem line documentation procedures.
The Port of Banjul has the reputation to be one the most efficient in West Africa. A container can be cleared in 24 hours. How did you manage to get to that level of efficiency and how do you intend to maintain it along with the increasing volumes?
There are two factors that are key in any cargo clearing process, the ship documentation and custom documentation. Here, the custom department, which is a separate department under the Ministry of Finance, does the custom documentation and the shipping agent and the Port Authority do the shipping documentation. The speed at which the clearance process is done depends on the co-operation between the customs, the port authority and other agencies within the port. In most ports where there are delays, the customs have been the major stumbling block, but in our case it is the opposite, the customs are our selling block. The Port Authority is managing activities within the port, but there are other agencies like customs, animal health, NIA etc. in the port and each has its own mandate by the act to carry out. In other ports each department operates as an island, independent from the other, to a very large extent the reason for it in most port especially in French speaking ports, is that the Port Authority doesn't handle the cargo, the handling of the cargo and everything is done by a private company. We are aware of the negative implication of having to make life difficult for the port to clear goods, if we make it difficult for goods to move out within a reasonable time frame it is going to result into additional costs, which will pass on to consumers and it will come out as some of the inefficiencies of the port and once it comes out like that, the trade is gone and we are out of business. Gambia depends a lot on export trade and in order for that to be competitive we have to have a minimum transport cost.
| Regulations and safety controls on national and foreign ships are more and more strict at the international level. What is your policy as far as the respect to those standards and regulations are concerned?
In terms of enforcing regulations, apart from running the commercial aspect of the port we also provide advisory services and consultancy to the government on enforcing marinating regulations. On the domestic side we have the port act, which is the regulation that govern the ships registered within Gambia. On the international side there are international conventions, which are included under IMO convention which governs international routing of shipping. In terms of labour, the international labour organisation regulates the work force. In terms of port state control there is a memorandum of understanding between countries within the western and central African region. This port state control consists of carrying out inspections on vessel as and when it is required to ensure that they comply with international regulations.
You have invested a lot into the expansion of the port's facilities. How satisfied are you with the recent transformations and what will be the next steps?
Each development phase of the port took the port from one stage to the other. In 1972, we had a jetty of 122 metres an inside back of 102 metres with 2 warehouses and ten big traffic container cargo. In the late 70s early 80s, there was the need for more open storage cargos rather than closed storage and there was the expansion and construction of another jetty, which was 123metres long with a width of about 29metres, there was then more storage area to handle containers. In 1995 the containers and cargos traffic was increasing and then again we needed to expand to meet the growing demand. Then, there was the need to have dedicated roll-on roll-off facilities, and the extension of the other jetty, the already 123metres-long jetty was then extended by 177metres so that we had a stretch of 300metres.
The ports Authority may be seen as the core of the trade gateway project. What is your strategy to enhance the Gambia's competitive advantages?
The port's mission is to exhale as a leading marinating centre for trade and logistics. Our role within the trade gateway is to create free port facilities in order to encourage value added activities around the port thereby enhancing the competitive advantage of the country in handling export trade. The export trade has gone through a lot of external shock during the devaluation of the CFA and the regional trade policy. In order to cushion the effect of that external shock one needs to create some internal mechanism whereby you can enhance your competitive advantage. Gambia's competitive advantages are location, economic system, efficiency level of our ports, etc. We undertook to invest in bonded warehouses, which is the fast track of free port, the element of processing and distribution. Three bonded warehouse were constructed (nine thousand sq. metres), all of them have been taken, one is being used for packaging of groundnut oil, the other one is used for processing of groundnut oil in the Gambia and for the last one there is a proposal for a short time lease, for some electrical assembly.
You have signed in the past various agreements with sister ports authorities. Besides, we can observe that Durban is the only stop for Evergreen in Africa. Do you intend to expand your bilateral agreements with foreign ports Authorities or shipping lines?
Actually we have inter port co-operation within the sub-region with Ghana, Senegal, Cape Verde, and outside the sub-region we have South Africa, Port Nec and outside of Africa we have with Taiwan, Tai Chin Harbour. Two weeks ago I signed an agreement with the port of Huston in Texas. In both the US and Taiwan I took the advantage of my presence there and did a one day investment promotion on the Gambia which was attended by companies that are interested in doing business in the Gambia. I also met with the senior vice president of Evergreen, we talked about the possibility for them using Banjul as a hub port for West Africa. They were interested and discussions are still going on. For international relationship with other ports, we have an inter port Co-operation. The whole objective is to develop trade, enhance our technical capability, etc.
What would be next challenge as we entering the 21st century?
Our main challenge as a management is to better prepare before moving to the 21st century, we want to prepare the port in terms of providing adequate infrastructure, a computerised system and more cargo handling equipment.
I earlier mentioned the competitive advantage of the Gambia, as a small country we are thinking big as we are aiming to become a regional hub. What Singapore is able to achieve, Gambia has the potential to achieve it too. We give investors an opportunity to access the market, the ECOWAS market and to increase their penetration. The trade gateway is aiming at starting this kind of business, Multinational Corporation. |
Gambia Ports Authority