President Uhuru Kenyatta will on Friday commission the second container terminal at the port of Mombasa.
Kenya Ports Authority said the CT2 project, a partnership between the governments of Kenya and Japan, will be done in three phases.
Phase 1 has already been completed and was handed over to the KPA in February this year. It comprises two berths that are numbers 20 with a quay length of 210 meters and a draft of 12 meters to serve medium size vessels.
According to the nation.co.ke, Japan provides a cheap loan of 0.2 per cent interest with a repayment period of 30 years.
The terminal is on a 100-acre land that was reclaimed from the sea to create a 900m long quay.
KPA corporate affairs manager Hajj Masemo said berth No 21 has a 350m long quay and a depth of 15 meters capable of accommodating post-Panamax vessels of 8,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) capacity.
“This first phase was constructed at a cost of Sh30 billion which includes the supply of two ship-to-shore (STS) gantry cranes and four rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes for yard operations,” Masemo said in a statement on Saturday.
A new access road with six lanes was also constructed joining the Port Reitz road to ease entry and exit of cargo traffic from the port.
The second phase of the project is on course following the recent signing of the Sh24 billion loan deal between Japan International Cooperation Agency and KPA.
It is expected to be completed in 2017, while the third and last phase of the project is expected to be completed by 2020.
Source : Hivi Sasa
