The controversial merging of the Algarve’s ports with the Port of Sines, 200 kilometres north in the Alentejo, created the Port Authority of Sines & the Algarve which has been in Miami while presenting Portimão’s port at Cruise Shipping Miami 2014.
This event is the most important one for the international cruise industry and brings together operators and decision makers in the growing cruising sector. This year there was a record number of participants in Miami, around 12,000, with 900 exhibitors from 127 countries.
Cruise Shipping Miami 2014 provided an opportunity for contact with the major cruise operators and hopefully those Portuguese present were pushing the Port of Portimão as a destination of excellence on international cruise routes, and skirting over the fact that cruise ships over a certain length can not dock in Portimão due to a lack of long-overdue dredging work in the Arade channel and at the dockside.
Cruise traffic has increased dramatically in the Algarve where Portimão is the only port that can take cruise ships but the lack of any investment in the local infrastructure has hampered growth and cut the Algarve from many cruise company's schedules. Last summer's promise of investment from the then new Minister for the Economy, Pires de Lima, was followed up by his taking away the management of the Algarve's ports and handing it to a port authority many miles away in Sines.
Portimão's council is in a desperate financial situation, it has one of the highest council debts in the country, and the sooner the port is turned into a first class reception area for tens of thousands of tourists, the sooner mayor Isilda Gomes can start to rebuild the city's shattered finances inheritied from years of fiscal idiocy under the previous incumbent.
