A return to economic growth in Côte d'Ivoire has paved the way for the authorities to push ahead with plans to increase the capacity of Abidjan's port through the development of a new container terminal.
The initiative, which comes on the back of a marked increase in maritime traffic since 2011, forms part of Côte d'Ivoire's efforts to consolidate its position as a West African trans-shipment and transit traffic centre.
However, even with the jump in activity, the road to rolling out the project looks set to be bumpy, with the award of the tender resulting in formal legal action from one of the unsuccessful bidders.
The Autonomous Port of Abidjan (PAA) recently awarded the tender for the building and operating of the second container terminal, known as TC2, to a consortium led by France's Bolloré Africa Logistics (BAL), which also comprises Denmark's Maersk subsidiary AP Moller Terminals (APMT) and fellow French conglomerate Bouygues.
The concession covers a 21-year period and will take the form of a public-private partnership. The consortium plans to invest a total of CFA300bn (€457m) in the venture, which is slated to be operational by 2016. The terminal will be constructed on a 35-ha site adjacent to an 1100-metre-long, 18-metre-deep dock financed by the PAA.
The TC2 project is part of a broader scheme to extend the port's capacity and address some of the PAA's limitations, including its depth - currently only 11 metres - and the Vridi canal entrance, which is too narrow to accommodate the turning radius of large vessels. The canal is now set to be widened and, along with the harbour adjacent to TC2, dredged in a $2bn project recently awarded to the China Harbour Engineering Company.
The new terminal will allow ships with an 8000-container capacity to enter the PAA, according to BAL, which should significantly increase the port's trans-shipment potential. Limitations have meant the port has had the capacity to accommodate only ships carrying a maximum of 3600 containers to date. TC2 is expected to add an annual capacity of 1.5m twenty-foot-equivalent container units (TEUs).
The PAA is one of the continent's busiest ports in terms of volume. Data from the International Association of Ports and Harbours shows it notched up 530,000 TEUs and 16.6m tonnes of maritime traffic in 2010.
The selection of the BAL-led consortium faced close competition from two other bidders when undergoing the pre-qualification evaluations by the PAA's Attribution Commission. The first came from Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Company and South Korea's Hanjin Shipping, while the other was submitted by Philippine handler International Container Terminal Services Incorporated (ICTSI), working in conjunction with French heavyweights CMA-CGM and Necotrans, along with Côte d'Ivoire's Movis.
The award of the TC2 tender to the BAL-led group, announced on March 21, has proved to be controversial. The ICTSI consortium has formally contested the decision by filing an appeal in early April with the Commission for Evaluating Bids (Commission d'Ouverture des Plis et de Jugement des Offres) in which it asked for the deal to be cancelled and a new tender launched. It alleged the BAL-led consortium had not provided key documents required for the pre-selection process, and that West African Economic and Monetary Union regulations and a directive covering public tenders were not followed properly.
With no response forthcoming from the commission in the stipulated five-day period, BAL's competitors announced plans to pursue the matter through the Public Tender Regulation Authority (Autorité de Régulation des Marchés Publics). Abidjan has long been one of the primary ports of entry to the broader West Africa region, handling hundreds of thousands of containers and substantial volumes of cargo destined for countries further inland, but following the post-election instability in 2011, traffic shifted to other regional facilities - such as Tema in Accra. However, with activity rising, a new container terminal could help the PAA reassert its primacy. Of course, news that the ICTSI consortium intends to take its case to the supreme court if necessary suggests the authorities' plans to increase Côte d'Ivoire's trans-shipment and transit traffic could be less than straightforward.
© Oxford Business Group 2013
