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Cargo on the Nile

The private sector is helping bring river transport back to life, Niveen Wahish reports
Did you know that 94 per cent of goods in Egypt are transported by road, 5.3 per cent by rail and less than one per cent by river? That may be changing soon. Efforts are underway by the private sector in cooperation with the government to better utilise the river for transport purposes.

The government would like to see Egypt on the same level as the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium who transport between 15 and 47 per cent of their goods via rivers. It should not be too difficult seeing that river transport was a thriving business since the pharaohs who are depicted on the walls of ancient temples using waterways for transport purposes.

This system was in use until the 1960s, according to Maged Farag, chairman of the National River Port Management Company (NRPMC), the first private sector company to develop and operate a river port. In fact, he pointed out that there are 49 unutilised river ports along the banks of the Nile extending from Aswan all the way to the Mediterranean. Farag was speaking during the inauguration of Tanash Port, Imbaba, 20 kilometres north of Cairo.

Tanash Port is the first port to be developed and operated by the private sector along the banks of the Nile. Farag added that in recent years the attitude of the government towards river transport has changed. Just this week the prime minister announced the set up of a regulatory body to oversee the efficient management and operation of river transport. And as Minister of Transport Alaa Fahmy put it while inaugurating the Tanash Port, the role of the government is to ensure a proper environment for the private sector to develop this industry.

That is what Hamdy Barghout, corporate business development manager of Egytrans, a private transport and services company, hopes for. Egytrans has set up two companies to tap into the river transport sector. He lamented that inland water transport has long been forgotten and it needs to become part of the inland transport map once again. He stressed that not only is it useful for the transport of dry bulk like stone, coal or wheat but also liquid bulk like molasses and fuel, as well as containers. He called upon the government to establish a river transport authority similar to the Suez Canal Authority .

"Right now there are at least 11 authorities that a company has to deal with in order to issue a license to set up a port," he said, adding that his company has been trying to get a license to establish a port for the past year and the process is not over yet. Barghout believes this industry needs investment through the private sector, private-public partnerships and foreign investors.

The government has done some initial work to pave the way for increased investments. Over the past four years it has put down some $155 million to achieve navigability of the river by constructing and repairing existing locks, dredging shallow sections of the waterway and modernising navigation systems to enable barges to move safely during any time of the day. Furthermore, according to Karim Abul Kheir, chairman of the River Transport Authority (RTA), the length of the river has been divided into six regions and a maintenance company for each region is responsible for seeing that it remains navigable. However, Abul Kheir stressed that the best way to keep the river navigable is to increase the number of barges running through it, to prevent sedimentation.

The urge to boost river transport stems, according to Abul Kheir, from the fact that it is a cheaper, less polluting and safer mode of transportation compared to road transport and railroads. In addition, he pointed out that river transport could be essential in meeting increasing demand for transport capacity. Farag of NRPMC estimates that by 2012 there will be a daily need to transport around 360 tons, up from 326 tons in 2010. Abul Kheir added that once trailer trucks are banned from Egypt's roads, there would be a huge gap in Egypt's transport sector. Trailer trucks have been given a three-year grace period in 2009 after which they will be forbidden.

According to Farag, five litres of fuel can move a barge up to 550 kilometres whereas the same amount of fuel would keep a truck moving for only 100 kilometres. Also, a barge with a 1,200 tonne capacity carries the equivalent of 40 to 45 lorries. This illustrates not only the savings on fuel, but also the benefit in less traffic and accordingly fewer accidents on Egypt's congested roads.

And as Farag put it: "Transporting wheat via river barges will save the state up to 20 per cent of what it would have paid to transport wheat by trucks." This means that, "more funds will be freed to directly support the state's subsidy programme rather than covering overheads such as transport."

In fact, the NRPMC has signed a five-year contract to transport 750,000 tons in 2010 and up to two million tons of wheat annually by 2012 along the River Nile for Egypt's General Company for Silos and Storage (GCSS), the state-owned importer and distributor of wheat.

NRPMC won a public tender to rent the Tanash Port from Nasr Company for Casting in March 2008 for a period of 15 years. It is developing four additional river ports: Tebbin (15 kilometres south of Cairo), Alexandria (two kilometres south of the Port of Alexandria on the Nubaria Canal), Beni Suef and Minya. Plans are also underway to roll out other ports in Upper Egypt as well as beyond Aswan extending to Wadi Halfa in Sudan.

NRPMC is one of three sister companies under the umbrella of Nile Logistics, Citadel Capital's platform company in the regional logistics, river transport and port management sector.

© Al Ahram Weekly 2010