The management of the Sines and Algarve Port Authority (APS) has excelled itself by launching yet another survey to add to the long list of delaying tactics employed to deny Portimão the lifeblood needed to start to regenerate the struggling Algarve municipality.
The management of APS is ‘expected to launch in the coming weeks’ a tender for some market research and an economic feasibility study on ‘the possibility of carrying out works’ at the port of Portimão to see if enabling larger cruise ships to dock will be cost effective.
As patiently explained by the president of APS, the tender will be released early next month and it is expected that the procedure for selecting the winner will take a minimum of two months. Market research will therefore start this year or next, or whenever.
The market study will be used 'to assess whether there is demand from passengers and cruise ship companies to use Portimão as a stop off destination.'
The answer to this is widely known within the cruise industry with pent up demand from companies keen to add Portimão as a destination but unable to, due simply to docking problems.
The economic feasibility study is intended, 'assuming that there is a market,' to assess whether the investment required to extend the docks will be repaid and over how many years.
If this market research was key to deciding the outcome of the investment proposal for Portimão, why was it not carried out years ago, or at least as a first step?
The answer simply is that Sines is the place soaking up all the investment with press release after press release from APS extolling the economic virtues of this container port.
The Sines Port Authority was given the Algarve to run so that investment could be diverted from the Algarve to Sines. Had the Algarve Ports Authority remained as a managing body, it would become clear that insufficient funding was the problem and that the government was to blame.
By handing the Algarve to the Sines Port Authority the act using smoke and mirrors was complete and little more than superficial investment in Faro and Portimao docks has been made as a result, while Sines is booming.
Last year, the port of Portimão registered a total of 14,634 cruise passengers, while in the first half of this year that number stood at just 5,357 as more and larger ships are turned away.
The existing infrastructure, although recently improved, still does not allow the berthing of these larger cruise ships. New cruise ships are longer than existing fleets as the trend is for cruise companies to lengthen their fleets. Portimão as a cruise destination gradually will slip from cruise company lists as a viable destination unless the docks are lengthened in a civil engineering job that should not stump any competent company.
As for the deliberate delaying tactics being used to deny the Algarve a cruise destination, Economy Minister Pires de Lima remains silent despite having promised immediate action back in 2013 during his inaugural visit to the region.
The expansion of the docks to the minister, a former businessman, was an imperative that has clear economic advantages to the region not least to help Portimão Council start to get out of debt.
Pires de Lima promised €10 million but that was two years ago and memories fade.
If anyone still imagines that the Algarve is treated equitably by Lisbon, the interminable delays and inaction by the Sines and Algarve Port Authority is perhaps the best example yet of how the region is continually, often sneakily disadvantaged and denied sensible, cost-effective funding for key projects.
Other examples of long overdue infrastructure projects are a modern rail service with a link to the airport, surely among the last in Europe not to have one, and a useable alternative to the motorway which by law should be provided as the Via do Infante is now tolled. The EN125 does not qualify as an alternative using the government's own criteria.
As for Portimão, the council can but offer its input into the latest survey and cost-benefit analysis and hope there are no more delays, should the port report be a positive one.
See also: http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/6324-portimao-dock-expansion-might-start-in-2017-perhaps
