A Comprehensive Maritime Transport Policy (CMTP) strategy will be presented to Cabinet for approval before the end of the current financial year, according to Transport Department acting deputy director-general, Mthunzi Madiya.
He also stated that the revised Merchant Shipping Act of 1951 would be presented to Parliament for formal approval within a few months.
Madiya said that once the CMTP strategy was approved, it would allow for the targeting of investment opportunities in what he described as “low hanging fruit” such as the coastal shipping of bulk and liquid cargoes along the country’s 3 200-kilometre coastline.
Madiya said that from a government policy development and implementation perspective, the country’s maritime sector no longer had an excuse for not rapidly transforming while increasing financial investment.
“The responsibility of government is to develop policies [and] South Africa today has policy that needs to be implemented,” he added.
