Ethiopia eyes Eritrea's Tio Port as More Important than Assab and Massawa.
April 30 2011
Ethiopia's prime minister Meles Zenawi, in his latest interview with the self proclaimed Eritrea Opposition website, disclosed that in the immediate future, the Eritrean port of Tio is strategic and more economically important to Ethiopia than the traditional Assab and Massawa ports.
He said that under the current prospects in Ethiopia, even if we had Eritrean ports as key ports, we will still be needing Djibouti. We are investing heavily in Djibouti. We are going to build a new railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti. We are going to build a new railway system from the north to Tajura-a new port will be built in Tajura (old Djibouti port).
Recently huge Potash deposits has been discovered in Eritrea by South Boulder Mines at Colluli and in Ethiopia by Allana Potash at Dallol with combined worth around 120 Billion Dollars.
Analyst estimates that Colluli deposit and its surrounding constitutes nearly half of the total deposit discovered in both countries and is one of the shallowest and world class deposits in the world (only at a depth of 23 - 180 meter) and 100 Km from the port of Mersa Fatma or 200Km from Massawa.
However, the Dallol deposit is at 100Km from Eritrea border alone and at a depth of 100-200 meters.
The prime minister continued by saying that the demand of the Ethiopian economy is going to go beyond the capacity of Tajura and Djibouti to take care of the requirements of Ethiopia. For example for the recent potash discoveries in Ethiopia's Afar region -that is millions of tons per year - that needs to be transported only to the nearest sea port first by a rail way. And technically speaking, the closest port to this deposit is not Assab or even Massawa, but Tio. Eritrea could develop Tio into a bigger port. So under normal situation, Eritrea could regain most of these businesses, that currently lost, from the services of Tio port to Ethiopia for potash and beyond.
By the way of his talking the only way he can benefit from this multi Billion Dollar, world-class deposit is by getting access to the Eritrean ports specially the Tio port than Assab. However, under the present circumstances between the two countries, it is unlikely Ethiopia will benefit from the service of any of Eritrea's ports.
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Editor's note:
Who knows? May be this new found potash and its associated Billion Dollars
revenues might bring the decade long dispute and mistrust between the two countries to an end. In the case of this Potash, Ethiopia needs Eritrea so much and the way forward is to normalize relation with Eritrea at the earliest first by vacating from all Eritrean sovereign territories including Badma.
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