The Kilindini Waterfront Terminal Operations (Kwatos) system was introduced on 1 July as a paperless documentation system designed to speed up the processing of freight. Mombasa harbour master and chief operations manager, Twalib Khamis, commented: “The new system is integrated. Many port stakeholders, including the Kenya Revenue Authority, shipping lines and clearing and forwarding agents, use it. It still experiences teething problems.”

Harry Abok, the corporate communications officer at the Port of Mombasa, said: “We are working on rectifying the problems that have been associated with the automated system.” However, a spokesperson for the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) later said that the system had “not stabilised as expected,” apparently conceding that Kwatos was suffering from more than teething difficulties.

The KPA hopes that the system, which was installed by TSB Total Soft Bank of South Korea, will enable it to make more use of its capacity, ease planning and make it easier to supervise work through the provision of real time information.

KSh250M of the total KSh450M (US$6.88M) project costs have been spent on computer and infrastructural hardware, including modern gates and weighbridges. A backlog of more than 15,000 containers had built up by the middle of this month and traders reported that it took about two weeks to clear each container. The lack of port capacity also resulted in a queue of at least eight vessels waiting to dock in the harbour.

Some vessels have recently switched to Mombasa from Dar es Salaam as their scheduled stop in recent months because of congestion at the Tanzanian port, but there is nowhere else to go for large vessels in East Africa beyond Mombasa. The KPA insists that the delays are partly the result of the inability of some port customers to use the system.

In addition, a strike by employees of Rift Valley Railways has prevented containers bound for the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala railway from being processed, while the IT overhaul has been further complicated by the introduction of the new Simba system by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

Yet port users remain to be convinced that Kwatos will end the long running problems at Mombasa. The vice chairman of the Kenya International Freight & Warehousing Association (KIFWA), Peter Mambembe, said: “With the launch of Kwatos, we hope the port management will have no excuses for delays such as those that have been happening at the gates.”

William Kidima, the spokesperson for Ugandan port users, added: “The new system is good and we support it. However, everyone must know that Kwatos will not move a container from point A to point B or from the yard to the scanners. That still remains the work of the port’s crane and forklift drivers, who need to do satisfactory work and on time.”

Meanwhile, plans to construct a second terminal on an adjacent site have run into political difficulties. Last December, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) finalised plans for a US$235M loan to the KPA to fund the project. It even agreed to proceed with the scheme when the political dispute triggered widespread bloody conflict in the East African country in January.

Yet construction work has been delayed, apparently because the National Assembly has yet to ratify the loan agreement. JBIC’s loan can be transferred to the KPA only after the National Assembly agrees to the deal. The Assembly does not appear to have any particular objections to the credit agreement; rather, it seems that infighting within the government of national unity, which was formed after the January conflict, is holding up a number of political processes.

The Japanese loan comprises more than two thirds of the terminal’s anticipated cost of US$320M and so work cannot begin until it is ratified and the government can officially become the loan guarantor. The KPA aims to develop the new container facility, which is known as Kipevu West Container Terminal (KWCT), in three phases as additional capacity is required.

Once completed, it is hoped by 2018, it will have handling capacity of 1.2M TEU/year, making it far bigger than the existing 450,000 TEU/year Kilindini Container Terminal. It has been reported in the Kenyan press that construction work may not now begin until next year.

There have also been reports that the new terminal could be managed by a private company and, although various ministers have denied this in the past, the terms of the JBIC loan do require a concession to be considered.