The Portfolio Committee on Transport, having conducted public hearings on the Draft White Paper on National Commercial Ports Policy, reports as follows:

1. The national Department of Transport briefed the Committee on 13 March 2002 on the Draft White Paper on National Commercial Ports Policy. This briefing followed Committee hearings on an earlier draft and submissions made to the Committee by a range of stakeholders in the course of 2001. In this context, the Committee has also conducted oversight visits to the ports of Cape Town, Durban and Richards Bay.

2. The Committee welcomed the opportunity for further engagement on the Draft White Paper. It also welcomed many amendments that reflect concerns raised by the Committee, and by stakeholders in earlier hearings of the Committee.

3. The Committee believes, however, that further amendments are required in the following four significant respects:

(a) There is vagueness about the end-state institutional location of the National Ports Authority (NPA). Given the largely regulatory, landlord and strategic policy-making role envisaged for the NPA, we believe that the White Paper must unambiguously state that the NPA should, in its end-state, be answerable to the national Department of Transport.

(b) The present draft makes a number of proposals on port operations restructuring. The Committee believes that any such restructuring must be based on in-depth research into the sustainability of any proposal, and that this restructuring must involve effective negotiations within the context of the National Framework Agreement on the restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

(c) The present draft introduces the notion of inter-port competition. The Committee believes that the White Paper must make it clear that any inter-port competition should be strictly within the framework of an overall, emerging South African growth and development strategy.

(d) In general, the White Paper should more clearly emphasise the critical and overarching necessity of aligning port policy with an emerging national growth and development strategy.