Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0342/03426.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 35KB | 526 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03426}
$Pretitle{227}
$Title{Sudan
Chapter 3D.   Marine Ports and Shipping}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
government
sudan
workers
port
imports
union
rate
trade
million}
$Date{1982}
$Log{Port Sudan*0342601.scf
}
Country:     Sudan
Book:        Sudan, A Country Study
Author:      Donald P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 3D.   Marine Ports and Shipping

     In 1982 Sudan had only one operational deep-water harbor, Port Sudan,
situated on an inlet of the Red Sea. The port had been built from scratch-work
began in 1905-in connection with construction of the railroad line from
Khartoum to the Red Sea to serve as the entry and exit point for the foreign
trade the rail line was to carry. It operated as a department of SRC until
1974 when it was transferred to the Sea Ports Corporation (SPC), a newly
established public enterprise set up to manage Sudan's marine ports.
Facilities at the port eventually included fifteen cargo berths, sheds,
warehouses, and storage tanks for edible oils, molasses, and petroleum
products. Equipment included quay, mobile, and other cranes, and some forklift
trucks, but much of the handling of cargo was manual. There were also a number
of tugboats necessary for the berthing of ships because of the narrowness of
the inlet.

     During the early 1970s port traffic averaged about 3 million tons a year,
compared to an overall capacity of about 3.8 million tons. Exports were
somewhat over 1 million tons and imports about 2 million tons; about half of
the latter was accounted for by petroleum and petroleum products. By the
mid-1970s stepped-up economic development had raised traffic to capacity
levels, and by the 1980s growing development activities were expected to
overtax the facilities. Physical expansion of the harbor and adjacent areas
was generally precluded by natural features and the adjoining location of the
city of Port Sudan. However surveys showed that utilization could be increased
considerably by modernization and improvement of existing facilities and the
addition of further cargo-handling equipment. An initial program of civil
works began in February 1980 assisted by a loan from IDA. A loan to purchase
equipment was made by the ODA, and West Germany also put funds into the port.
Much of this initial phase was reported to have been completed by the end of
1981. One of the major improvements undertaken has been to make the port more
readily usable by road vehicles. Developed almost entirely as a rail-serviced
facility, large areas of the port had interlacing railroad tracks that were
mostly not flush with surrounding surfaces, thereby greatly restricting
vehicular movement. Many of these tracks have been removed and new access
roads constructed. Much of the cleared area has become available for
additional storage facilities.

     Further development of Port Sudan after completion of the first
rehabilitation program has been planned. This will include finishing
roll-on-roll-off facilities begun under Phase I. But implementation had not
started in early 1982. The government has expressed its intention to construct
a new deep-water port at a point about twenty kilometers below Port Sudan.
Construction of a new port has long been under consideration in response to
the projected growth of port traffic in the latter part of the twentieth
century. A detailed study for the proposed port was made by a West German firm
in the mid-1970s, and plans were drawn for three general cargo berths,
including roll-on-roll-off container facilities, and an oil terminal. Major
funding for the port, known tentatively as New Sawakin, reportedly had been
offered by West Germany's development agency Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau
and the SDF.

     A national merchant marine, Sudan Shipping Lines, was established in 1962
as a joint venture between the government and Yugoslavia. In 1967 it became
wholly government owned. From the initial two Yugoslav-built cargo vessels,
the line had grown by the mid-1970s to seven ships, totaling some 52,340
deadweight tons. During 1979 and early 1980, eight more ships were added,
including six built in Yugoslavia and two in Denmark, increasing tonnage to
152,800 deadweight tons. The Yugoslav vessels were all multipurpose and
included container transport features. The Danish ships were equipped with
roll-on-roll-off facilities. Sailings that had been mainly between Red Sea
ports and northern Europe were expanded to several Mediterranean ports.

Pipelines

     Operational problems on the Port Sudan-Khartoum section of Sudan Railways
by the early 1970s had resulted in inadequate supplies of petroleum products
reaching Khartoum and other parts of the country. In 1975 construction of an
oil pipeline from the port to Khartoum was begun to relieve traffic pressure
on the railroad. It was completed in mid-1976, but leaks were discovered and
the 815-kilometer-long pipeline, laid generally parallel to the railroad, did
not become operational until September 1977. As constructed, its capacity was
600,000 tons a year, but product movement attained the through rate for that
capacity only in mid-1981. In early 1982 steps were taken to add additional
booster pumping stations to increase the rate to an annual through capacity of
1 million tons. The line carried only refined products, including gasoline,
gas oil, kerosene, and aviation fuel obtained either from the refinery at the
port or from import-holding facilities there. These were moved in a continuous
operation to storage tanks at Khartoum with some offtake made at Atbarah. Rail
tank cars released by the pipeline were reassigned to increase supplies of
petroleum products in the western and southwestern regions of the country.

Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments

     In early 1982 Sudan carried on trade with about sixty-five to seventy
other countries. Fewer than twenty of them, however, accounted for four-fifths
or more of total trade. Agricultural products have dominated Sudanese exports
since the period of the condominium, and in the early 1980s they continued to
account for over 95 percent of export receipts. Cotton, gum arabic,
groundnuts, sesame, and sorghum were the main commodities; live animals, hides
and skins, and groundnut, cottonseed, and sesame products (oil and meal)
constituted the more important remaining export items (see table 8, Appendix).
Sudan has long been the world's second largest exporter of long-staple
cotton, and cotton exports have usually constituted over 50 percent of total
exports by value. Gum arabic was in second place until the 1960s when the
production of groundnuts expanded to occupy that position. Sesame became the
third most valuable export in the 1970s. Marked fluctuations have occurred,
although not necessarily at the same time, in the earnings of these four
principal commodities as the result of weather conditions, local price
situations, and world market prices.

[See Port Sudan: A merchant ship at quayside in Port Sudan, the republic's
major commercial transport link with foreign markets Courtesy United Nations]

     Foodstuffs and textiles were Sudan's largest imports by value at the
start of national independence. These commodities held that position into the
mid-1970s when they were surpassed by greatly increased imports of machinery
and transport equipment as the government began an intensive drive for
economic development. The share of foodstuffs and textiles declined by roughly
one-half during the decade, from 40.5 percent in 1971 to less than 20 percent
in 1979. Machinery and transport equipment, which had accounted for about 22
percent of imports in 1970, averaged 40 percent between 1975 and 1978,
reaching a high of 45 percent in 1976. Imports in this category declined
sharply in 1980 to 20 percent of total imports affected by the slowdown of
economic development (see table 9, Appendix). Government plans for
self-sufficiency through the dev