Breakbulk.com: DJIBOUTI PORT TO SUPPORT CHINA’S AFRICA PUSH

China is eyeing the small but strategically located nation of Djibouti as a springboard to strengthen commercial ties with Africa, including breakbulk cargo shipping, through its Belt and Road overseas trade initiative.

A liquefied natural gas or LNG terminal, a wharf for livestock carriers and a 2-square-kilometer development incorporating a trade logistics park and exportable goods processing zone will be built by 2020 in or near the Djibouti port and free trade zone by state-owned China Merchants Group, according to recent state media reports.

China Merchants is a port, logistics and financing conglomerate that bought 23 percent of the Port of Djibouti in 2012. It also owns port stakes in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Shanghai and other Chinese cities. And its overseas investments include ports in Turkey and Nigeria.

The company is building warehouses at Sri Lanka's Port of Colombo, state media recently reported, and plans to spend US$152 million this year to develop a trade and logistics park in Minsk, Belarus.

The Djibouti project, the cost of which was not announced, would complement China’s infrastructure construction projects in countries across Africa, from railways to hydropower plants, and its effort to expand trade with the 20-nation Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

At a mid-June forum in Shanghai, China Merchants General Manager Hu Jianhua called Djibouti a strategic East African country for his and other Chinese companies that are expanding in the region, and a port at the southern end of the Red Sea with the potential to become a regional shipping center.

Djibouti government officials at the forum signed a port development agreement with officials from China Merchants and northern China’s Port of Dalian. A recent China Merchants financial report said the firm boosted its Djibouti investments by 15 percent last year.