THE MALIAN COMPANY FOR TEXTILE DEVELOPMENT (CMDT) WANTS TO STRENGTHEN ITS ACTIVITIES AT THE ABIDJAN PORT

Activités portuaires Thursday 15 June 2023

On Monday 24 April 2023, a delegation of the Malian Company for the Development of Textile (CMDT), led by its Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Nango DEMBÉLÉ, was received in audience by the Managing Director of the Abidjan Port Authority (PAA), Mr. Hien Yacouba SIÉ.

The main objective of this visit was to reaffirm the will of CMDT to reinforce the commercial relations with the Abidjan Port. Indeed, the volume of Malian traffic in transit at the Abidjan Port is on an upward trend. It increased by 1.3% between 2021 and 2022, corresponding to 8,686 additional tons of goods over this period, mainly due to bulk, bagged and packaged rice, iron ore, sugar, salt, glucose and molasses.

To maintain this course, many facilities are put in place by the Port Authority for Malian economic operators. These include estate facilities with the provision of covered warehouses and platforms for the storage of goods, open storage developed to facilitate transit operations.

On the security front, the implementation of truck tracking, which is a logistical and technological solution that makes it possible to track and geo-locate trucks and containers in transit at the Abidjan Port and at the Ivorian customs office, from the time they leave Mali to the warehouse in Abidjan. For this purpose, the Port Authority is working on providing additional parking spaces.

Besides, the PAA values good and frank collaboration with Malian economic operators. To this end, several Malian representations such as the Malian Shippers' Council (CBC), the Malian Warehouses in Côte d'Ivoire (EMACI) and the Malian Council of Road Transporters (CMTR), are based at the Abidjan Port platform.

Anxious to strengthen inter-professional links by developing synergies between all port stakeholders and customers of the port, the Abidjan Port Authority has made representatives of Malians shippers in Côte d'Ivoire, full members of the Abidjan Port Community's watchdog committee, where they all work to ensure the reliability of the port passage. In the same vein, the PAA has set up a representative office in Bamako to get closer to its customers and to listen to their concerns.

In order to improve the competitiveness and strengthen the positioning of the port platform of Abidjan, awareness actions, lobbying activities and trade missions of prospecting are regularly organized in the direction of Malian operators both in Côte d'Ivoire and in Mali.

In this regard, in terms of competitiveness, the port platform of Abidjan has been revamped through the development of its infrastructure, including the second container terminal inaugurated on 2 December 2022, and the grain terminal that will soon be operational. These two terminals will strengthen the port's capacity to handle Malian goods, specifically containers and grains, in optimal conditions and offer the best services to economic operators. "Everyone must work for the success of sub-regional integration, and the Abidjan Port intends to play its part fully. That is why we are working to be an ever more efficient port," recalled the PAA's Managing Director, to reassure his hosts who promised to increase the volume of cotton in transit at the Abidjan Port.

So many measures have been put in place to boost the competitiveness of the Port of Abidjan and offer the best services to customers.

To corroborate this state of affairs, Mr. Hien Yacouba SIÉ, reiterated during his speech, the commitment of the Port Authority to accompany Malian shippers, by regularly providing solutions to the problems they encounter during their activities at the Abidjan Port, "Our ambition is that those who pass through the Abidjan Port should be always satisfied ... Our desire is that relations between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali remain good and that trade relations should be at a good level," he concluded.