The deep water port of Enfidha divides the Tunisian professionals

Adel Mokhtar, the general manager of Horizons Maritimes is very enthusiastic: “ The deep water port of Enfidha will bring exceptional traffics to Tunisia. It will create a dynamic in the region as it will be used as a hub for Tunisia, Libya and Algeria.” For this former director of Bizerta port, this megaproject will allow to decongest the port of Tunis and will replace the port of Sousse, which is located in the city center.

An investment of 640 million dollars, 20 000 jobs created, the port targets at a first stage a volume of 3 million TEU and 3 million tons of bulk cargo. This port aims also to reduce the cost of transport by 15% by reducing the transit times and the transhipments port to deliver Tunisia. For example the transit time Shanghai/ Tunis, which is currently around 32 days, will be reduced to 25 days. For the exports, the transit time Tunis/ Antwerp will move from 22 days to 16 days.

By early February 2017, Fadhel Abdelkefi, the Tunisian ministry of investment and international cooperation has described this project as a constantly-recurring issue. Is this project a marketing campaign for a government which is out of ideas or a real development project?

Bizerta versus Enfidha 

For many professionals, the location of the port is inappropriate. Located at 100 km in the South of Tunis, “Enfidha port is not in the East-West maritime route”, said one Business man. For him, this project “doesn’t make sense anymore, because the situation has changed since the project has been imagined in the early 1990s. The costs has most certainly doubled since then”. 

Adel Mokhtar agrees: ?It would have been more judicious to choose Bizerta, which is a port located in the extreme North of Tunisia with zero deviation on East-West corridor. A study made by a global infrastructure advisor (Moffat and Nichol - author's note) in 1994-1995 demonstrated the profitability of this project.”

The proposals to implement a deep water port in Bizerta abound: in 2009 the entrepreneur Ali Belakhoua associated with US investors has revealed his project. In 2012 a competing project was presented by Kais Laribi.

Mr Belakhoua has created a Facebook page “All for a deep water port in Bizerta ”(transl.) which is showing a screenshot from MarineTraffic with vessels passing by the North of Tunisia (200 per day) and not by the Sahel’s gulf where Enfidha port is located.

The pros of Enfidha say that this port is very well located between the two major industrial cities of Tunisia (Tunis and Sfax). Furthermore, the region is hosting an industrial zone since 2010 and, since 2009, an international airport.

For Wassef Lourimi from Transglory : “The country has other priorities: poverty, healthcare, education etc. We need to modernize the current ports and solve their issues. Bizerta port has two main problems: the movable bridge is creating car congestion to access to the city and is suffering from administrative burdens. The ports of Tunis and Sfax need to modernize their equipment.”

Yussury Kallouche, says: “Enfidha is not an interesting subject for the media as it doesn’t create the buzz. They talk about it from time to time but they do not create a real debate around it.” For this maritime executive,” Tunisia has a global volume import and export of 300 000 TEU, so in order to reach the volumes expected, the new port should attract a transhipment volume of 2,7 million TEU. This number is not realistic in the middle term taking into account the difficult situation in the region” for him “politicians don’t have the courage to revise this project today. When the project was first conceived, the transhipment ports in the Mediterranean were in a growth curve. Now with the overcapacity, there is a fierce competition in the region and shipping lines in their costs cutting logic prefer direct calls.”

Mr Kallouch recommends that “Tunisia finds a port which will serve the Tunisian economy and strategy then the project will have a reasonable size.”

Charles Dridi

This article was updated from a first version published in February 2014 in Transport & Logistics Review

About the author : Charles Dridi is the head of strategy unit at HAROPA Ports. His industry experience includes: freight forwarding, warehousing and port operations. He has a lot of passion for the maritime and the logistics field and participates in the debate by posting articles, writing and speaking into conferences.

The opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the company that he works for.