New port authority reveals plans

The port of Djibouti was in the process of being modernised and upgraded by Dubai Ports Authority (DPA), which won a contract in June to manage the Red Sea port for 20 years, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on Wednesday. The Dubai company hopes to increase Djibouti’s handling capacity from 125,000 mt to 300,000 mt per year and to make it the most popular transhipment point on the African continent, Luc Deruyver, the port manager, told AFP. The first stage of the operation was a two million dollar computerisation and training process, he said. Two-thirds of the port’s trade comes from Ethiopia, which stopped using Assab port in Eritrea when the two countries went to war in 1998. Deruyver told AFP that Dubai had also begun negotiations with Djibouti to manage its main airport. Meanwhile, the Ethio-Djibouti Railway Company planned to rehabilitate the 781 km railway line between the two countries as part of a $40 million project, funded by the European Union, to improve its services, Ethiopian state media reported. The project was expected to be launched in 2002 and finished two years later. The 103-year-old Ethio-Djibouti Railway Company was jointly owned by Ethiopia and Djibouti, and currently had 14 locomotives and a capacity to transport 30,000 mt of goods per month, the Ethiopian News Agency reported.