The Kenyan government says that it intends looking for a private company to operate berths 20 and 21 in Mombasa once the construction is completed in February 2016.

Transport cabinet secretary Michael Kamau said that it was required that the company being awarded the contract would have experience from operating berths or terminals with a capacity of at least 400,000 TEU. He acknowledged that this factor would probably rule out a local Kenyan company winning the tender but said that having the necessary expertise and experience was essential.

Nevertheless, the government expected the winning company to have a 51 percent stake in the company with the balance of 49 percent being owned by Kenyan interests.

The two-berth Sh23 billion will have a planned capacity of at least 550,000 TEU.

International bidding will be invited in a little over one month’s time, he said, while emphasising that there are no plans to privatise the entire port.

“All people who are working up to berth 19 will continue working as usual because this is additional capacity. So it is more people coming in, it is more employment, it is faster movement of cargo and of course fulfilling the conditionality of the loan,” he said.

Container traffic has increased by 11.5 percent over the past six months, reaching 463,807 TEU for the half year, compared with 415,958 TEU for the same period of 2013. The port has also been able to reduce its dwell time from an average of 5.8 days in 2013 to 3.5 days this year.

Overall volumes have increased by 8 percent to 11.9 million tons for the half-year, compared with 10.5mt for the same period in 2013.