Previously, Bolivia had used existing treaties with Chile to ship exports via that country’s northern ports of Iquique and Arica, thanks in part to a dedicated rail link to the latter.<\/p>\n
However, neither the rail link nor the dedicated terminal Bolivia maintains at Arica are in a good state of repair and are wholly ill-equipped to handle the potential minerals bonanza to be had from mines at Potos\u00ed, which have huge reserves of tin and silver, while Bolivia also boasts the largest reserves of lithium in the world.<\/p>\n
Bolivia has long sought alternative maritime outlets to reduce its dependence on Chile, whose ports currently handle 80% of its exports. In 1992, Peru’s then president Alberto Fujimori agreed to cede some 3.58 sq km of coastline around Ilo to Bolivia for a period of 99 years, although the convention was never ratified. However, proposals by the country’s new president, Evo Morales, to build a new mega-port and economic and industrial free zone at Ilo are being more warmly received, with facilities being partially transferred to Bolivia for 99 years.<\/p>\n
Under new proposals, cargo would initially move across Lake Titicaca to the port of Puno and thence by road or rail to the coast. At the same time, the authorities would like Brazil to go ahead with a proposed new railway, linking it with both Bolivia and Peru. If built, this new line could carry all or part of the 200m tons of cargo that Brazil annually exports to China, albeit through its own Atlantic ports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In September, the Peruvian Congress Foreign Relations Committee approved the so-called Boliviamar maritime convention, which should eventually provide land-locked Bolivia with an outlet to the Pacific Ocean via the port of Ilo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south-america"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924","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=8924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8926,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions\/8926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8924"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}