({{Reuters}}) – {Kenya signed a $270 million loan deal with Japan on Friday to help expand capacity at Mombasa port, a busy facility that is the main trade gateway to east Africa.}<\/p>\n
The port handles fuel, consumer goods and other imports for Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, as well as regional tea and coffee exports.<\/p>\n
Container traffic through the port reached about one million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2014, up 11.9 percent on a year earlier. The port management said it expected a 30 percent increase to 1.3 million TEUs in 2015.<\/p>\n
Officials said the loan would support the purchase of cargo handling equipment, help finance a brand new container terminal and aid construction of another terminal already being built. Japanese Ambassador Tatsushi Terada was at the signing.<\/p>\n
Neighbouring states and regional firms have been putting pressure on the Kenyan authorities to improve handling and efficiency in the port as trade to and from the region grows.<\/p>\n
Kenya has long had plans for a second container port further north on its coast, in the Lamu area, but the project has faced repeated delays.<\/p>\n
Neighouring Tanzania, to Kenya’s south, is also working on making its Dar es Salaam port more efficient and plans another container terminal, adding competition in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
({{Reuters}}) – {Kenya signed a $270 million loan deal with Japan on Friday to help expand capacity at Mombasa port, a busy facility that is the main trade gateway to east Africa.} The port handles fuel, consumer goods and other imports for Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000055889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-18292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000055889,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton18292.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000055889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18292"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=18292"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=18292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}