Kenya post-election turmoil causes huge port backlog

By George Obulutsa

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's main port, a lifeline for the region's economies, is struggling to cope with a huge backlog of cargo as post-election violence has crippled road transport out of Mombasa, the ports authority said on Friday.

"The long holiday period and disruptions caused by unrest after the election has led to a cargo pile-up at the port, which is now battling with a severe congestion crisis," the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) said in a statement.

Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, eastern Congo and South Sudan all import merchandise through Mombasa. The World Bank says Kenya is the transit point for a quarter of Uganda and Rwanda's GDP and one-third of Burundi's.

Mombasa's port also handles most of the region's food aid shipments. The U.N.'s World Food Program said Kenya's turmoil has blocked shipments to Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kenyan businesses are reeling from a wave of ethnic clashes over President Mwai Kibaki's disputed election win that has slowed down economic activity and hurt the key tourism sector.

As of Thursday containers equivalent to 17,587 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) were parked in Mombasa port, which has a holding capacity of only 14,300 TEUs, KPA spokesman Bernard Osero said.

That translates to 12,850 containers -- a quarter of them destined for countries in the east and central African region, Osero said.

"Basically, transporters are not coming to pick up the cargo. Nobody wants to risk his transport on the road," Osero said.

The KPA said only 36 containers were taken out of the port on Thursday by road, three of which were transit cargos. Normally the port handles 550 containers a day, Osero said.

Osero said the delay was compounded by difficulties in rail transport with trains not arriving at the port on Friday.

The port authority added that in the next two weeks about 30 ships were expected to call at the port, of which three are oil tankers. Nine others are outside the port waiting to offload cargo.

Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda are experiencing fuel shortages as a result of disruption of supply lines to the port.

Osero said the port was offloading any crude oil shipments that came in.

"We are handling crude. That one is pumped straight to the terminal, to the reserves, that is the refineries and the storage tanks," he added.

Mombasa port handled 484,462 TEUs in the first 10 months of 2007, compared with 396,556 in the year-ago period.