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Formed recently through a decision of the Council of
Ministers, the Ethiopian Dry Ports Enterprise is set
to have a second dry port built at Semera Town of
the Afar Regional State, 558Km to the east of Addis
Ababa.
The construction of the dry port will be carried out
by the state-owned Water Works Construction
Enterprise (WWCE) at a cost of 26 million Br.
Getachew Mengiste, state minister of Transport and
Communications (MoTC) and Bekele Gadissa, general
manager of the enterprise have signed an agreement
on May 2, 2008, last Friday.
The dry port, which will be erected on a 100ht plot,
is designed to serve as a depot for incoming goods
from the northern part of the country. On top of
this, the proximity of the area to the port of
Djibouti is expected to facilitate the import-export
business.
The project includes construction of fences,
warehouses, inland roads, container depots and
customs offices, insurance companies and maritime
transit, and its construction is expected to be
completed in January 2008.
This project is one of the two dry port projects
planned to be constructed by the federal government.
The construction of the dry port at Modjo, the other
chosen site, located 73Km east of Addis Abeba in the
Oromia Regional State, has been awarded to a joint
Ethio-Chinese construction and engineering company
named NoRI-LA at a cost of 20 million Br.
Before it embarked on these projects the MoTC has
conducted a study in 2006/07 which concluded that
the construction of dry ports is very indispensable
to facilitate the import-export trade of the
country. The dry ports in Modjo and Semera are
expected to ease the burden on the congested port of
Djibouti.
Demurrage and opportunity costs incurred by Ethiopia
due to delay in clearance of goods is partly
attributed to the congestion of the port of
Djibouti as a result of the increase in the volume
of goods imported and exported by Ethiopians, the
largest users of the port. Therefore, the
construction of these dry ports is expected to
alleviate this problem.
The WWCE is also undertaking the huge Tendaho-Kesem
Water Dam Project with a reservoir capacity of 2.5
billion metre cube of water.
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