Logistics costs and operation time in Kenya significantly dropped last year on the back of strong digital processes at key points and improved infrastructure, a new survey shows.

According to the 2017 Logistics Performance Survey recently unveiled by the Shippers Council of East Africa, cost and time indicators for road freight, sea, air and rail in Kenya last year dropped compared to 2015.

Road freight turnaround time between Mombasa and Nairobi in 2016 was 26.4 hours down from 36.8 hours in 2015, and 10.7 days between Mombasa and Kampala, down from 15 days. Time taken by trucks from Mombasa to Kigali dropped from 17.5 days in 2015 to 12.5 days in 2016. This illustrates a 40 per cent truck turnaround between 2014 and 2016.

Truck turnaround for Dar es Saam to key corridor destinations like Kigali, Bujumbura and Kampala remained steady with a marginal decrease of 18 per cent.

Port dwell-time, the time it takes a vessel to arrive at the port area to the first berths, improved from 68 hours in January 2015 to about eight hours for the Port of Mombasa. This is attributed to the introduction of fixed berthing by the Kenya Ports Authority and the expansion of the port which increased its capacity.

The custom processes at the port also decreased from 55 hours to 43 hours within the year.

Nairobi has the shortest airport dwell-time in the region at an average of 28 hours for exports and 33 hours for imports while the airport in Bujumbura has the longest dwell-time at an average of about 65 hours for exports and 67 hours for imports.

Kenya’s airport infrastructure was rated higher than all other airports in the region, scoring 4.2 out of five whereas Rwanda,Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda scored 2.9, 2.8, 2.7 and 2.6 respectively.

Road freight costs from Mombasa to Nairobi declined from Sh130,000 in 2011 to Sh87,900 last year while that from Mombasa to Kampala dropped to Sh227,300 from Sh340,000. Last year, logistics investors spent an average of Sh181,000 for the 20 feet container and Sh271,000 for the 40 feet container from the UK to Mombasa by sea. On the other hand, it cost Sh207,000 and Sh309,000 for the 20 feet and 40 feet containers respectively from the UK to Dar es salaam.

Air freight charges from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport continued to maintain the lowest cost of importing as airfreight from India, China and UK were at Sh71,000, Sh63,900 and Sh58,400 respectively.

Even so, Kenya was rated behind Rwanda and Uganda in terms of overall logistics efficiency. According to the survey, Kenya got an overall logistics efficiency score of 2.4 out of five.

Source: The Star

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