 INFRASTRUCTURE & TRANSPORT |
One of the urgent short term priorities of the government is the improvement of the existing infrastructure, which is seriously affecting the economic development and the full utilisation of the so far reached achievements of other sectors. The Sudan benefits from being a very vast country, in fact largest in the whole Africa, and it has access to the Red Sea through its old harbour city Soukin and the newer Port Sudan; currently the most important trade centre in the Sudan. However, a lack of adequate number and quality of storages and containers is preventing again the full usage of these perfectly located harbours. Cost and cargo handling price wise Port Sudan is a very attractive harbour compared to any other Red Sea and neighbouring country harbours. The recent rehabilitation of the port infrastructure has increased the capacity to handle 18 million tons per year, and there are further plans to develop the harbour area in a near future. With the Chinese consultancy there is a development plan to be concluded by the year 2020. The Sudan Shipping Line among some other liners assure the existing transportation from Port Sudan to the other Red Sea cities and eventually even further away. The River Nile runs through the whole country, and where the capital Khartoum is located is a centre point for the Blue and the While Nile. The river has not been used up to its potential, and so far the river transport has been monopolized by the River Transport Corporation.
In the infrastructure, the railway is on the top of the agenda. The General Manager Engineer Omer M. M. Nour of the Sudan Railways, welcomes investors: "The government has a program, which will end in 2005 in which it is inviting the private sector to come and invest in the infrastructure. Some started to participate in the railways. Our interest is to have the private sector or joint ventures to take care of passenger trains." According to the Minister of Transport, Dr. Lam Akol, the Sudan has great potential to serve various interest: "On the railway, the challenge we are facing is to be able to compete worldwide in the coming period especially since the Sudan is trying to join the World Trade Organisation.
Also, the Sudan is a member of COMESA, and this opens the opportunity to Port Sudan to be part of the market of about 400 million people". It is in the plans to build a connecting railway to Ethiopia, which would link the Sudan to the Inter-African railway.
The national airline Sudan Airways, created in 1947, has an extensive network of flights connecting cities in the Sudan, but also frequent flights to the Gulf, Europe, Asia and other African countries. It enjoys from a fairly good reputation regarding the flight safety and the punctuality of the flight schedules, though its operations are shadowed by the US sanctions. The State Minister of Civil Aviation, Eng. Mohammed Hassan Elbahi, explains the consequences of the US sanctions: "Unfortunately, especially in the area of aviation, the effect of embargo is very severe. For example, our airline is using Boeing and Airbus. Boeing is American, and we are not allowed to take spare parts and maintenance from Boeing. This is obviously very dangerous for the safety of the people who are in this airplane. The Airbus engine is American, and regarding that we are facing a similar problem". At the moment Sudan Airways is going through a major privatisation process headed by the British consultants, and the plan is to sell 51% of the shares. A few international airline consortiums have shown interest, but until August 2001 nothing was yet decided.
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The State Minister describes some of the potential in the future: "It is interesting because if you want to go to China from the Sudan you need to go to the north of the Europe and after that you go to China in the east, because you don't find a direct airline going to the east. I have been thinking of that and during this year we are going to find a some sort of an airline which will go from the east to the west, starting maybe from Nigeria to Chad, Cameroon, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and up to China. I will discuss this with Iran Airways, and come up with an arrangement satisfying both sides. I think we are going to succeed maybe by the end of this year".
The Sudanese National Pensions Fund has also realised the business opportunity in the field of infrastructure, explains its General Manager, Kamal Ali Madani: "In 1998 when the oil became reality in our economy, we decided to establish a construction company. We see that the future in the Sudan is mainly concentrating on new constructions: roads, bridges, dams and such infrastructure that are very vital to the development of our economy in the future. It is worth mentioning that the Sudanese National Pensions Fund has three affiliated companies; Petrocost for Engineering & Investment, which is the one specializing in construction, Tirhaga Trading and Khartoum Tannery. The main objective of the Sudanese National Pensions Fund is securing the well-being of the Sudanese, and the company is aiming to raise money for them through its various activities. General Manager continues about the future plans: "We conceive that the future of the construction business is very promising. There are plans to construct dams to link the Sudan with other different countries, and bridges and irrigation projects are vital for agricultural scheme considering the amount of uncultivated land. We have bought also a skin tannery which started production at the beginning of March 2001 and we have made good contacts and contracts with the Italians who are very good in the skin industry. Also the Spanish have shown interest in making business with us in this field. This tannery is one of the biggest tanneries in the Sudan. We can privatize or sell this company in the future and then start practicing the convenient operations of pension funds, which means concentrating mainly within the developing money markets."
The recent oil sector has created a lot of new necessities, and certainly the most important problem to be solved is how to transport the crude oil from the fields to via Khartoum Refinery to Port Sudan. Elnefeidi Group is a family business founded by the father Bashir Elnefeidi, and it is his seven sons who now run the business. One of the Elnefeidi companies, Elnourus Transport headed by General Manager Gamal Elnefeidi, has a responsibility to transport the crude oil from some areas where there is no pipeline built yet.
An other near future project of this efficient transport company is the development of bus transport in a drastic way, as General Manager Gamal Elnefeidi explains: "The most interesting current project is the Khartoum terminal. That is the only project we did as shareholders with the government. We started thinking that we had to make something different to the traditional bus transport, so we decided to build a terminal, not just an area where the buses now stop to take passengers, as what we have now in the country". Elnourus Transport makes up to 50% of the whole Elnefeidi turnover, and is so forth the biggest company within the Elnefeidi group. |
