CAF report praises Colombia, slams Ecuador

Guayaquil, in particular, came in for some serious criticism, with the report noting that it suffered from poor service quality and corruption. Furthermore, there were no integrated policies in place which would resolve these difficulties, nor a suitable legal framework to implement them. The port also suffers from poor telecommunications, road and rail links, a shortage of cranes and a too shallow access channel.

In Ecuador, large companies are now looking to shift freight out of Guayaquil to more competitive local ports, which, despite being smaller, offer far higher quality service. The report quotes the La Favorita supermarket chain which pulled out of Guayaquil, citing inefficiency, and nowadays uses the port of Manta.

The mayor of Guayaquil has subsequently put together a steering committee representing all parts of the maritime community to look at ways of helping the port become more competitive. “It is not necessary to spend much money. It is more necessary to concert efforts to improve administrative processes and work practices to reduce bureaucracy and coordinate actions so that all parties working in a way that allows time optimisation, ” notes Constanza Calderon, CAF assistant director in Ecuador, adding that a followup report will be issued in 8-10 months time to measure the progress of any improvement.

CAF has suggested that Guayaquil uses the same quality service programme implemented by Valencia , which resulted in container throughput increasing from one million to more than 1.8 million TEUs/year.