…Expected to become largest port in
West Africa
The Tema Port is to benefit from a US$1.5 billion
expansion project which will be financed through a
public-private-partnership between the Ghana Port and Harbour Authority (GPHA)
and Meridian Port Services (MPS).
The Ghana Port and Harbour Authority (GPHA) and the
Meridian Port Services (MPS) together with APM Terminal has since signed
a memorandum of understanding to that effect.
The expansion works will also include the expansion of the Accra- Tema
Motorway into a 3-lane highway in both directions.
Meridian Port Services is one of the top container
terminal operators in Africa while APM Terminals is also one of the world's
largest port and terminal operators based in the Netherlands, and its partner
Bollore Africa Logistics (Africa's leading integrated logistics network).
The project will take 4 years to complete and will
transform the Tema port to accommodate larger vessels with four deep water
berths and access channels.
The Tema Port will become the largest cargo port in West Africa and one of
the best in Africa with a capacity of 3.5 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units
(TEU) per annum. The port is currently 1 million TEU.
After been briefed on the Project, President John
Mahama congratulated GPHA and MPS for the continued partnership between the two
companies.
He said ‘ports in West Africa are in
competition with each other because of not only our own internal traffic but
also because of the traffic of landlocked countries, adding that the more
efficient our port is the more traffic it will attract and the more jobs it
will create within our economy.’
He stated that Tema port has been constrained for a
long time and many people have complained about the congestion at Tema
port.
‘So it has been one of the priority projects that
this government has put before it to execute in order that we ease the
congestion and improve the efficiency so that the shipping lines will feel more
comfortable discharging their cargo here in Tema than in any other port on the
west coast of Africa,’ said President Mahama.
In March this year, the President commissioned the
new cranes that had been installed at the port. This brought the idea of MPS
investing further to expand this port came up. Already GPHA had created a
master plan to expand the port and MPS took up the challenge.
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