Chairperson, Minister, the dead hand of inefficient and costly parastatals is hampering our nascent economic recovery. It slows the pace by which millions of our poor are being lifted to opportunity and into the middle class. It constricts delivery. It retards redress.
Chairperson, I have established that transport entities such as air, rail, freight and ports are not integrated parts of our transport network. This said, exports and imports amount to 27% and 28% of our gross domestic product respectively, according to recent statistics. This makes us even more of an export-driven trading nation than Australia, where the equivalent figures are 20% and 22% respectively.
Considering how important trade is to our country, it is astonishing how uncompetitive we are. The Financial Mail reports that our port authorities and operations are hampering rather than facilitating trade. Our very own ports regulator shows that Durban is the world's most expensive port.
Durban's average marine and infrastructure cost per ship, quoted last year, was $182 000 per container, compared to an average tariff of $86 000. And if that were not bad enough, it takes between five and seven days to discharge a ship in Durban, compared to just two in Rotterdam. So, our ports are not just costly, but our operations are also inefficient.
Loading coal and iron ore for shipment as a niche port is clearly not the same as loading containers and general freight at the eThekwini, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela metro, Deputy Minister. The latter is influenced by turnaround.
Inefficiencies are inevitable when one considers that the Transnet National Ports Authority is a state-sanctioned monopoly, which is sheltered from the competitive pressures that private-sector companies are forced to absorb. It leads to the unwelcome headlines we saw last year, where, for example, we read on 4 May that Durban was experiencing the worst delays in the entire history of containerisation. [Interjections.]
Our neighbouring states, however, understand what growing their market share in a very tough international economic environment takes. Both Maputo in Mozambique and Walvis Bay in Namibia have invested heavily in better productivity and are becoming more competitive. Both have private-public initiatives to improve facilities and break bottlenecks leading to their ports through a seamless, integrated transport system.
Minister, it is refreshing that your predecessor was candid enough to admit that operational inefficiencies and low productivity levels in ports reduce our country's competitiveness. Equally, the DA welcomes the expansion of the Cape Town Container Terminal project and the President's announcement this year that substantial investments will be made to address these serious challenges.
We need to match this fiscal investment with a commitment from all stakeholders to transform our ports into hubs of low-cost efficiency. Only then will we be able to attract sufficient volumes of business to drive our country forward on the locomotive of trade-driven growth.
Ecobank estimates that by 2013 sub-Saharan Africa will account for 12% of daily global oil supplies or 12 million barrels per day. As of last week, there were 71 rigs in West African waters, out of 825 worldwide. Globally, there are only five to six major drilling and significant oil companies. They all understand the facilities and opportunities available in global shipyards.
While South Africa is involved in projects of around $20 million, most of the larger conversions and projects take place in Singapore and Dubai. Bearing in mind the deviation costs and lost earnings involved in transporting rigs to these far-off destinations, it is absolutely in our interests to prove to the industry that we have the capacity and turnaround times to meet this demand in our own nearby harbours and to service their needs. However, our track record in this regard is poor. As recently as February this year, Transnet's inability to improve the harbour facility at Saldanha Bay forced at least one major foreign investor, after 16 months of fruitless negotiations, to withdraw their investments from the planned Saldanha Industrial Development Zone.
The Airports Company SA, Acsa, is another parastatal that has a similarly suffocating stranglehold on the free movement of people and the expansion of opportunity to all our citizens. One needs to give credit where credit is due and say that our shiny, spanking new airports were a major part of our unprecedented success in 2010 and that 4% of our post-World Cup tourism growth is due to these and other favourable impressions. However, while Acsa's credit ratings were revised from "stable" to "positive" in January, and its debt structure has improved, with risk attributed as "mid-range", leverage is still high, although reducing.
Like many other state-owned enterprises, Acsa has substantial debts to service and repay arising from infrastructural improvements. In Acsa's case, the capital costs of heavily upgraded airports at OR Tambo, eThekwini and Durban are the main drivers behind the huge tariff increases we have seen in the past few years - 69% last year. The International Air Transport Association described these charges as "amongst the highest in the world". Indeed, IATA estimates that Acsa airport tariffs are set to rise by 161% in the next five years. One appreciates that our highly geared state-owned enterprises are vulnerable to interest-rate increases. However, surely the time has come to re-evaluate airport taxes, bearing in mind that the outlook for interest rates appears stable for the rest of this year, at least? It cannot be in our country's interest that the price-sensitive tourism industry is subjected to continued price shocks by Acsa-administered airport taxes just when the first signs of economic recovery are breaking the surface. It's time for some market-related competition, Minister, or, at least, a radical rethink on how transport-related entities need to be consolidated in order to increase efficiency and do business in South Africa. I thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]