The national government is not planning to privatise critical facilities at the ports of Mombasa and Lamu, Kenya Ports Authority board chairman Benjamin Tayari has clarified.
For the past two weeks, there has been a political storm at the Coast after KPA management invited private companies to bid to manage critical assets in Mombasa and Lamu ports.
The facilities that KPA intends to place under private firms are four berths (11-14) at the port of Mombasa and the Mombasa Port Container Terminal 1.
At Lamu port, KPA will hand over the three container terminals at berths 1-3 and the Lamu Special Economic Zone.
“The stories you’ve been reading in the newspapers and the media about privatisation of the port are not true. One thing that I want to say and confirm is that KPA is not doing any privatisation,” Tayari said.
“What we are doing is something called concession. There's a very big difference between the privatisation and concession.”
A concession agreement is a contract that gives a company the right to operate a specific business within a government's jurisdiction or on another firm's property, subject to particular terms.
“Privatisation means that we are giving away the port to another private investor to run. But what we are doing is leasing out some of our assets to private investors to be able to bring more business to the port and then we generate more revenue for this country,” Tayari said.
He spoke to the press after a joint board meeting between the KPA and the Kenya Revenue Authority at the KPA headquarters.
Tayari said KPA had already entered into a concession agreement with private companies that have been operating within the port of Mombasa.
“We are already doing concession in this port. If you go to berth number four, there is Grain Bulk Handling Limited operating. That is also concession,” he said.
“If you go to berth number seven, you will see also Port Side is working there. And that one is also not privatisation, it is concession.”
Coast leaders led by Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir have vehemently opposed the decision by the government to hand over some of KPA assets to private companies.
On Tuesday, Nassir questioned the feasibility of the proposal to lease some of the assets of KPA to private firms.
He said the government does not have good intentions for the people of the Coast region, adding that as leaders they were never consulted.
“Leave Mombasa pPort alone. Go privatise Kenya Airways. We cannot be fooled,” Nassir said.
However, the KPA chairman said they will sit down with the port stakeholders and leaders from the Coast to discuss the issue.
“I just want to tell them that we are working with my team here, with the directors and the management, to sit down with stakeholders and leaders from the Coast region, so that they can get the right information on what we are doing,” he said.
