The Anaklia port project, as marketed today, foresees the development of \u201ca world class port for Georgia, establishing Anaklia as a focal point for trade to and from Central Asia and on the new Silk Road trade route between China and Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n
The team behind the project has changed since it was originally mooted and is now a consortium of interests operating under the banner of the Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) which comprises: TBC Holding from Georgia; Conti International, US; SSA Marine, US; Wondernet Express, UK; and G-Star, Bulgaria. Global Link Logistics, the Kerry logistics company, has also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Anaklia City JSC which will see it co-operate in the development of the port and the related Special Economic Zone.<\/p>\n
But while these consortium members are nominally in the game, how many have put their money where their mouth is? Those in the know suggest there has been little in the way of \u2018real commitment\u2019 \u2013 hard cash on the table \u2013 by the various consortium members. To date, the Government of Georgia is the only stakeholder to allocate significant funding to the project. And, significantly, while the project has been marketed as complementing China\u2019s One Belt One Road concept, there has been no take-up from China at an investment level \u2013 always a barometer of what constitutes a viable project.<\/p>\n
There are other indicators that all is not well. In October 2017 ADC announced that construction of the project would start on December 20 of the same year. There was a ground-breaking ceremony at the end of December 2017 with participation by members of the Georgian Government, but since that time there has been little evidence of major construction works.<\/p>\n
Also, it was announced in July this year that the \u201cearly dredging and reclamation works for the Phase 1 Anaklia Deep Sea Port project have been awarded to the Dutch dredging company Van Oord\u201d. This, it has to be said, is a positive sign but the edge is taken off this by the reality that this is the second time an announcement of this sort has been made \u2013 the first time being in October 2016.<\/p>\n
Further, there has been political change. In June this year the then Georgian Prime Minister, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, unexpectedly resigned citing divisions with his governing party and its billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvilli. Also exiting at the same time was the Minister of the Economy, like Kvirikashvilli, a big supporter of the Anaklia Port project. Subsequent to this it has been reported in the Georgian media that Giorgi Kobulia, Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, stated at a committee meeting in Parliament on July 13 that the new government intends to study the market and other data relating to the development of the port and \u201cif necessary review the whole project\u201d. He further said: \u201cthe thing is the situation with goods turnover changes very quickly. We should review the project one more time.\u201d Clearly, the current government leadership is expressing some concern about project viability and underpinning this value delivered to the taxpayer.<\/p>\n
The key point, however, is where is the market for the proposed new port? Georgia\u2019s two existing ports, Batumi and Poti, are both operating with substantial spare capacity. Poti also has plans for two new deep-water berths able to accommodate vessels of up to 9,000 teu \u2013 when such capacity is needed. The whole Georgian market for container traffic in 2017 accounted for just 230,000 teu loaded containers, up 11% over 2016 but hardly a foundation stone for a major new port development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COMMENT: Georgia\u2019s Anaklia deep-water port project proposal has been around for a number of years, but is it any further forward in real terms and will it clear the hurdle of receiving the private sector funding it needs to progress? The signs are not promising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-script"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}