Chinese loan finances recovery of Mozambican fishing port

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Chinese loan finances recovery of Mozambican fishing port

3:30 CAT | 29 Oct 2019

Photo taken on Oct. 28, 2019 shows the cold storage building of the Chinese-renovated Beira fishing port in Mozambique. The Chinese-renovated Beira fishing port will serve as a valuable platform for strengthening Mozambique's fishing industry and contributing to the country's economic development, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said here Monday at the inauguration ceremony. The Beira fishing port, damaged in a cyclone in early 2000, has been renovated by China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd since 2017. It now has a 377-meter-long shoreline, eight berths and a new cold storage covering 5,000 square meters. (Xinhua/Nie Zuguo)

Dock one of the fishing port of Beira in the Mozambican central province of Sofala, a project financed by a US$120 million loan from China, was inaugurated on Monday by Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, local media reported.

The dock is 377 metres long, compared with 188 metres previously, which allows 16 industrial vessels to be moored simultaneously, against eight before.

It also has six cold stores, an ice factory with a capacity of 60 tonnes per day, a fish processing room with a capacity of 50 tonnes per day, a handling capacity of 700,000 tonnes per year, among other improvements that have turned the infrastructure into the largest and most modern facility of its kind in the country.

Beira’s fishing port was destroyed by cyclone Eline, which struck the provincial capital of Sofala in February 2000, and its reconstruction began in 2016, with the contract awarded to the China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC).

The director of the Port of Beira management company, Carlos Calenga, told Mozambican newspaper Notícias that as the fishing dock has started operating again exports of tuna caught in the Sofala bank, which are currently sent by road to South Africa and also by sea to the United States of America, Japan, Spain and Portugal, can begin again.