By EPN Reporter
MBABANE – Government is now engaging the Government of Mozambique concerning the sea access project that seeks to give Eswatini access to the Indian Ocean.
The Eswatini Government has to engage the Mozambican government because the access to the Indian Ocean can only be done through the South-East African country. However, the Mozambican administration is yet to respond to the proposal made by the Eswatini Government regarding this project.
Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade Manqoba Khumalo gave this update regarding this enormous project the country has engaged in. He was asked after he highlighted the disadvantage of the country, being a land-locked one. He said the land-locked status of the country came as a disadvantage to investors because they had to access either Mozambique or South Africa when they want to trade their products through the ocean.
Regarding the project at hand, Khumalo said the project was done by well-known businessman Moses Motsa and Mark Andrade. However, at the stage the project was, it required that Eswatini Government should intervene so that it could engage the Mozambican Government. The Mozambican Government could not engage private individuals so they had to be represented by their government.
Khumalo said at this time, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport was engaging the Mozambican Government, as it was the ministry that was directly responsible for every form of transport in the country. He said Minister of Public Works and Transport Chief Ndlaluhlaza Ndwandwe and his ministry also engaged them on this assignment, but at the moment, they were still waiting for a response from the Mozambican Government.
In 2015, the then Minister for Commerce, Industry and Trade Gideon Dlamini was quoted by online media outlet, Marine Link, as having confirmed the plans for the country to build an inland port and a canal linking it to the sea, which would rival those in Panama and Suez.
He said the authorities in the kingdom were fully behind the scheme and they were giving it undivided support. He also said the undertaking was not to be a private project, as was also first believed, but would be done in partnership with the government of the country.
At government level, we are fully behind the project and we are giving it undivided support. The project owners had done presentations to Cabinet and we interrogated it and found that it is a wonderful one.
The plan is to build a 26-kilometre canal from the Mozambican sea to Mlawula, where the port will be constructed on 15 to 20 hectares of land. The media in this country, at the time, is said to have reported that it would cost an estimated E30 billion (US$3 billion) to implement this project.
