Maputo, 18 Nov (AIM) – The port of Maputo lost about 384 million meticais due to ten days of post-election demonstrations, called by the fugitive opposition candidate, Venancio Mondlane.
This is the sum paid to ships because of delays in loading or unloading cargo, according to a preliminary report compiled by the Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA) on the impact of the demonstrations on economic activity.
Under normal circumstances, Maputo port receives between 1,200 and 1,300 trucks a day. But the demonstrations reduced this number to about 300 trucks a day.
Citing data provided by the South African company Grindrod, one of the shareholders in the Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC), which operates the port, the CTA Executive Director, Eduardo Sengo, said that during the ten days of unrest at least ten ships were stopped in the port, unable to load the merchandise necessary to continue their journeys, because the flow of trucks into the port did not allow it.
For each day lost, said Sengo, cited in Monday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Carta de Mocambique”, the ships charged the port management 60,000 US dollars (or 600,000 dollars for the whole ten days).
Sengo said that a Panamax or Capesize ship would cost between 45,000 and 60,000 dollars a day. These are the ships used for South African mineral exports from the port such as coal or magnetite.
Normally these ships spend two or three days at the quayside. But during the demonstrations, this time rose to between seven and ten days.
“In this period, due to the demonstrations, about ten ships were waiting to load”, said the report. “Although it has not yet been quantified, the shipping lines want to raise their insurance costs, because the demonstrations have led to a deterioration in risk perception”.
Sengo said that, taking the transport sector as a whole, journeys were delayed or cancelled because of the demonstrations. “In the Maputo Metropolitan Region, journeys are structured into routes or corridors, and there are seven main ones”, he added. “During the ten days of demonstrations, a daily average of 127 journeys were cancelled, which resulted in a loss of 417 million meticais (about 6.5 million dollars). Added to this is the fact that the demonstrators erected barricades and demanded a fee – an informal toll – to allow vehicles to pass”.
In all, the CTA estimates that businesses lost about 8.4 billion meticais (over 131 million dollars).
Sengo warned that this would have knock-on effects on key variables such as the GDP growth rate and inflation.
Sengo put total losses to the economy during the demonstrations at 24.8 billion meticais, or 2.2 per cent of GDP.
This data is already well out of date, since it was calculated before the “fourth phase” of Mondlane’s demonstrations, on 13-15 November, which included a three day shutdown of the Ressano Garcia border post between Mozambique and South Africa.
(AIM)
Pf/ (491)
