Instead, profits or surpluses generated by individual port authorities (API) will be channelled into a new trust fund whose administrators will determine which projects in which ports will receive the funding they need.
Indeed, so difficult is the current financial situation of the government that the recent state budget allocated resources worth $38m to just seven port authorities, leaving nine bodies without any funding at all for the coming year.
“What we are trying to do is ensure that no port project is cancelled,” said Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, the general co-ordinator of ports and the merchant marine for the ministry. “We are therefore having to find new ways of sustaining them economically.”
However, he noted that this change in finance would not be complete until 2018.