Port Competitiveness: Challenges and limits for local development

Will the Autonomous Port of Douala survive the fierce competition that is coming despite the logic of complementarity so much advocated by the public authorities? Its competitiveness and its impact on the economy of the Gulf of Guinea are at the centre of concerns centred on the contribution of customs revenue to the State budget, the supply of companies and households, the development of exports that stabilise the balance of payments and the reduction of poverty, the basis of the Millennium Development Goals. These basic concerns are threatened by the diversion of traffic by competing ports, the abundant and diversified paperwork that weighs down the procedures, the multitude of participants, the passage times considered too long in relation to international standards and the congestion of the port at the origin of additional costs. The avenues of salvation are the construction of port infrastructures, the simplification, anticipation and dematerialisation of procedures, the development of the road network and the construction of a piggyback line between Edéa and Douala.