SUPPLY CHAIN this important inland market , which has also emerged as a trading hub for South Sudan .
The firm has also recently implemented a customer CARE programme , where larger customers receive a highly personalised after-sales service anchored with a dedicated point of contact .
Felder said : “ The growth is pleasing , but at the same time the infrastructure has to keep up with it . The capacity on the rail network is currently insufficient , and only three percent of cargo moves on rail , so the remaining 97 percent moves on road , which adds to the deterioration of the road network . The ports are also stretched for capacity , and productivity is rather low compared to developed markets .
“ Like many emerging markets , East Africa is characterised by a high import dominance . For every four containers being imported full , only one is getting exported full . This means there is a lot of open capacity on the backhaul route , creating a massive trade imbalance and also a large repositioning cost for us .
“ Of course our hope is that over time there will be greater proliferation of industrial and production activity in the region , in order to address this imbalance . Over time we also hope the inland logistics cost will go down too . Currently , it often costs far less to ship a container from China to East Africa than it does to truck that same container to its final destination in the region .”
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