The concessioning of Terminal 6, Buenos Aires – the facility intended to provide a much needed boost to the port’s container terminal capacity – has ground to a halt in a flurry of controversy.<\/p>\n
Patrick Campbell, secretary of the Argentine Chamber of Shipping, points the finger at property interests who are eyeing an area adjacent to Terminal 6, and possibly part or all of the Terminal 6 site itself, as land suitable for real estate development. He suggests the chain of influence in this respect extends to a high level.<\/p>\n
In addition, Mr Campbell is very critical of the Port Authority of Buenos Aires’ ability to get things done on time and in an efficient manner to complement the needs of shipping and foreign trade. He cites the delay in the dredging of the port’s access channel and realisation of the Terminal 6 project as indicative of a body that doesn’t have enough political clout to make real progress.<\/p>\n
Central government, he suggests, should intervene in these important matters.This, though,he believes reflects another related problem area: the fact that central government does not attribute enough importance to maritime trade which, in turn, is mirrored by the absence of financial support.Other transport sectors such as road, rail and air, he underlines, get significant subsidies.<\/p>\n
He is not alone in expressing these views. Dr Gordillo, president of the Private Ports Association, also highlights the status of the maritime sector as a low level priority in the eyes of government. This, he points out, is all the more ironic as trade growth is very positive, including an anticipated 50% increase in exports by 2010.<\/p>\n
Container traffic through Buenos Aires has risen by more than 20% per annum over the period 2003- 2005 inclusive, to a level of 1.37m teu in 2005 – a manifest reason why the early resolution of the Terminal 6 problem is seen as critical. Others,however, feel the roadblock to the Terminal 6 process is perhaps even more fundamental.<\/p>\n
Mediterranean Shipping Company, the major port user, basically suggests the concessioning process has been flawed throughout and has been shaped so as to protect existing interests in the terminal operating sector rather than broaden the competitive base. It feels it is this approach that has cultivated conflict in the process which, in turn, has seen it grind to halt.<\/p>\n
This includes the port authority moving to disqualify one of the three final bidders, ICTSI, on technical grounds. ICTSI, for its part, as has been well reported in the media, has said any such move is wholly unjustified and improper and that it will vigorously defend its right to stay in the process, in the courts if necessary.<\/p>\n
Marcelo Suarez, senior vice president of ICTSI, notes:”Our bid has been very carefully prepared and features the highest level of investment, US$169m. It is a bid that provides a comprehensive solution to the short term capacity issue and one that aims to achieve a broadening of the competitive base of container handling in the port.”<\/p>\n
The other two bidders in the process are BACTSSA (Hutchison) and Exlogistica (which has links to Exolgan), both of whom have an established presence in the Buenos Aires port area.<\/p>\n
When approached by Port Strategy,the port authority laid another, entirely different, reason at the door of the reason for the stalled concession process. Luis Angel Diez, Interventor, AGP, the port authority’s most senior executive, said this was due to ongoing legal conflict between workers formerly employed at the terminal and their employer Intefema which went bankrupt in 1996. He expressed some optimism, however, that the process would soon be back on track – some, though, see this as more wishful thinking than fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Container traffic is climbing in Buenos Aires but short term plans to install newcapacity are still stalled. Mike Mundy reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-america"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628","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=6628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6628"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}