Found this for interest sakes.
DMOR(Doing my own research)
China among interested investors for Cameroon port
Reuters, Saturday May 10 2008
By Tansa Musa
YAOUNDE, May 10 (Reuters) - Companies from China, Canada and Europe have expressed interest in investing in the building of a $655 million multi-purpose deep seaport in south Cameroon that will serve major mineral export projects, the government said.
The plan for the port to be located at Grand Batanga, 10 km (6 miles) south of Kribi, was presented to potential investors at a two-day meeting that ended Friday in the capital Yaounde.
The projected port facility, whose depth will allow the entry of much larger ships than those currently served by Cameroon's main port of Douala, would consist of four terminals -- for containers, oil products, iron ore and aluminium.
Cameroon's Economy, Planning and Regional Development Minister Louis Paul Motaze told Reuters late on Friday that a Chinese company, China Harbour Engineering Co. (CHEC), had shown interest in taking on the entire project.
Other companies from Canada, Europe and Africa were interested in buying stakes in the port project, whose initial cost was estimated at 282 billion CFA francs ($655 million).
"We have been very encouraged by this enthusiastic response and from the way things are progressing I am now very certain construction work on the first phase will start in 2010 and the first traffic will flow through the port by 2013," Motaze said.
He added the interested investors were insisting on build, operate and transfer (BOT) arrangements for the project. They had requested more information and follow-up meetings would be held before it was decided who the final partners would be.
"We are very willing, ready and determined to invest in this project which I believe will be very beneficial to the people and the economy of Cameroon and the entire Central African sub-region," Edward Xu, a spokesman of China Harbour Engineering Co at the conference, told Reuters.
Douala, which handles 95 percent of the import and export traffic of Cameroon and neighbouring landlocked Central African Republic and Chad, is restricted in the size of the ships it can handle because of its location on the sediment-filled River Wouri estuary. Its position demands constant dredging.
The proposed new deep seaport near Kribi would be able to take much larger vessels and would be linked by road and rail to major iron ore, cobalt, nickel and bauxite mining projects under development in Cameroon's interior, Motaze said.
This included a proposed 490 km (300 mile) railway line between the projected port and the Mbalam iron ore project of The Cameroon Iron Ore Company (CamIron), controlled by Australia's Sundance Resources.
CamIron general manager Roger Bogne told Reuters his company was very keen to invest in the development of the new seaport, at least in the iron ore terminal, so as to have an export outlet for the ore it planned to deliver from Mbalam by 2011.
When completed, the projected port was also expected to serve as a major shipment point for tropical hard wood from south-eastern Cameroon, northern Gabon and Republic of Congo. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit:
http://africa.reuters.com/) (Editing by Pascal Fletcher, David Christian-Edwards)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7510429