TPA Acting Director General, Madeni Kipande.
Speaking before the Parliament Standing Committee on Economic
Affairs, Industries and Trade over the weekend, TPA Acting Director
General, Madeni Kipande, said currently, the contract documents between
the authority and a firm that is to buy, install and handover the
running of the machines to the authority later on, are in the AG’s
office for verification.
“It is an unsolicited bid, the winner in the tender has a duty of
procuring, installing and handing over flow meters to the TPA,” he
explained.
Madeni said to ensure that fixed flow meters operate efficiently,
TPA has already started to train its staffs on maintenance of the new
digital meters that are expected to cost USD6.5 million (equivalent to
10.9bn/-).The move has come two years after Weights and Measures Agency (WMA)
ordered the removal of oil flow meters at Kurasini Oil Jetty for
inaccuracy in measurements that was scaring away the port’s market.
Kipande said if the documents are approved by December this year, the machines will be operational by September next year.
“It should be noted that in this transaction TPA is a not a direct
beneficiary of the oil flow meters since all revenue collected goes to
Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA),” he clarified but conceded “…TPA just
gets a small percentage of the revenue from the oil flow meters.”
Commenting on the oil flow meters that WMA ordered to be removed,
he said they were procured at USD4 million in 2004 (now equivalent to
6.7bn/-) and fixed at the Mtwara and Tanga ports but refrained from
commenting as to the losses incurred due to the absence of oil flow
meters for more than two years.
In another development,TPA Manager Awadhi Massawe said the
authority is also planning to renovate berths 1 to 7 which according to
him, are in need of major renovations to meet international standards
and allow easy landing and offloading of cargo from big ships.
“We have a number of challenges including the lack of modern cargo
offloading facilities and at times a ship is even unable to land on
these berths… “ he revealed.
In a related point of information, the TRA Acting Commissioner for
Custom and Exercise, Tiagi Masamaki, said during 2012/13 FY, TRA
collected a total of 12 bn/- from TPA activities and that a good
percentage of the total collections are from goods that enter the
country through the ports.
On his part, the Economic Affairs, Industries and Trade Committee
chairman Luhaga Mpina said as a way forward to improve services, TPA
should now work on constructing its own oil reserve noting that the
absence of petroleum reserves at the port contributes to delay and
increase of running costs.
“One ship sometimes spends over six days to offload oil due to the
insufficiency and inadequacy of pipes and our oil reservoirs belong to a
private firm and this causes high running costs,” he said citing that
the result is price burden to the final consumers who are forced to
cover the demurrage charges associated with offloading delays.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
No comments :
Post a Comment