UGANDA RE-ROUTES COFFEE EXPORTS THROUGH KISUMU

  Long delays at the railway crossing on
  the Kenyan border have led Uganda to re-route its coffee
  exports through a ferry link with the Kenyan port of Kisumu
  across Lake Victoria, Ugandan officials based in Kenya said.
      Uganda has a direct rail link with the Kenyan port of
  Mombasa through which it conducts 70 pct of its external trade
  but there is a chronic shortage of railway wagons, they said.
      Customs at Kisumu take less than a day compared with two to
  three at the Malaba rail border crossing, a Ugandan Railways
  official said. "Malaba is now handling only 10 pct of the trade
  and all the coffee and oil goes through Kisumu," he said.
      However, an accident recently damaged the wagon ferry which
  plies between Kisumu and the Ugandan port of Jinja, causing
  bottlenecks on the lake route too.
      Sources at the Coffee Marketing Board in Kampala reported
  delays in coffee export shipments last January due to
  congestion on the lake ferries.
      Coffee accounts for about 95 pct of Uganda's export
  earnings and last November President Yoweri Museveni ordered
  all coffee shipments to be carried by rail in order to avoid
  the higher costs of road haulage.
  

