Nathan Associates Inc., an American Company which has been entrusted with the exhaustive study of Ethiopia’s logistics performance and logistics strategy has submitted the final report of its study.

In a ceremony held in Addis Ababa at Hilton Hotel on April 9, 2015, the final study was handed to the Ethiopian government by Eugune Owusu, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Ethiopia.

The study pointed out recommendations on key matters such as, considering alternative ports, strengthening integration between various governments and private sectors, the development of infrastructure and opting for other modes of transportation.

The two years of study also suggested Ethiopia to make use of Port of Mombasa.

“Recognizing that Ethiopia would like to have other port/corridor options, the intervention emphasis will be on priority corridors to Port Sudan, Mombasa and Berbera,” states the report.

However, the Ethiopian government may not heed the recomendation.

“We are not going to consider the use of Port of Mombasa at the current situation of the country; the major criterion to select a corridor for a country’s import and export is the distance it has from the economic center,” Mekonen Abera, the Director General of the Ethiopian Maritime Affairs Authority (EMAA) told Fortune.

Data from EMMA indicates that the number of Ethiopian cargo especially container shipped to Port of Djibouti is 10,000 per month and the number of trucks coming to Ethiopia every day carrying Ethiopian cargo range between 550 and 600 trucks.

Ethiopia runs 132nd out of 189 countries on The World Bank’s (WB) 2015 Doing Business Index and the logistics performance index showed a change from 2.41 in 2010, 2.24 in 2012 and 2.59 in 2014, all out of five, with five indicating higher performance.

Source: Addis Fortune