The Port of Beira, in Sofala province, is the most efficient in southern Africa and the sixth fastest in cargo handling in sub-Saharan Africa. The information is from the latest World Bank (WB) report on the performance of ports handling containerized cargo in the world.

A total of 370 ports were evaluated globally, with the Port of Beira in 270th place. WB analysts say that containerized cargo takes less time at the Port of Beira than at ports such as Durban and Cape Town in South Africa and Luanda in Angola.

In Southern Africa, the infrastructure is the most efficient, as it is ahead of all the ports in the region, such as the Port of Maputo, which appears in position 321, the Port of Durban in position 364, Cape Town in position 365, both in neighboring South Africa, and the Port of Luanda, Angola, in position 366.

In the Sub-Saharan Africa region, Beira is the sixth most efficient port. The three most efficient ports in the region are the Port of Matadi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in position 170, followed by the Port of Berbera, in Somalia, in position 184, and the Port of Conacry, in the Republic of Guinea, in position 242.

For Jan de Vries, Cornelder's director in Mozambique, the achievement is the result of investment in infrastructure, equipment, systems and people.

"For a terminal to be efficient, you need to invest in infrastructure and we invest in expanding our container park, in storage, in rehabilitating the quays, in modern cranes - some of which can load two containers at the same time - and in access infrastructure to ensure that trucks can get in and out as quickly as possible," he explained, quoted by the O País portal.

It should be noted that the Port of Beira currently handles about 300,000 cargo containers per year and projects, in the near future, to double this amount to about 700,000 containers handled per year.