The minister of all things to do with the sea today decided to authorise the Sines and Algarve Ports Authority to organise dredging in the river Arade in Portimão.
This is not, as many had hoped, to enable large cruise ships to dock in Portimão and kick-start the economic resurgence of the city, but to remove an inconvenient sand bar that has been annoying skippers and which is a danger to the Formula 1 Powerboat World Championship which returns to Portimao on 29 and 31 July.
Mayor Isilda Gomes said to Sul Informação today that the sandbank had no been dredged for many years, despite it being a real danger to shipping.
Minister Ana Paula Vitorino said the €200,000 expenditure was "relevant to the region's economy," and it put "Portugal in the ranks privileged countries that hold large international nautical events, with significant impacts on the Economy of the Sea."
"The work meets the economic and tourism development needs for maritime activities, reflected in the promotion and enhancement of the Algarve as a destination," burbled the minister's office.
The dredging of 25,000m3 will be done “very soon,” according to Isilda Gomes, so that everything is ready in time for the Formula 1 Powerboat World Championship.
There is no final decision on the dredging work needed to allow large cruise ships into Portimão’s docks at an estimated cost of €10 million .
The mayor said she has discussed the matter with the minister who is "to study the situation" while waiting for studies to be completed by the Ports authority so she can "make a decision."
Readers are correct in concluding that the dredging in Portimão to allow large cruise ships to dock may never happen in this lifetime or the next.
Successive ministers have promised "immediate action," but since the Algarve’s port authority was taken over by the one in Sines, investment in the Algarve's ports has slowed to a trickle and excuse after excuse has been offered as to why there are years of delays for even the most cost-effective projects.
Economy Minister Pires de Lima promised "immediate action" on dredging as he understood the economic sense of the work but this was in 2013, he was young and fresh and not yet prone to boozy lunches and incoherent speeches in parliament.
Two years later in August 2015, João Franco as president of the ports authority, announced with no urgency at all that his “managers had commissioned a study, which is still going on, which simulates the entry of various sized ships into the Arade river and their docking at the Portimão facility.”
Franco, stifling a yawn, explained that there will be "no conclusive findings" much before the end of 2015 and reckoned that sometime during 2016 the preparations needed before filling in an EU funding form might be completed, with any dredging perhaps in 2017, or later...whenever...
High-profile powerboat racing seems a sexier topic and immediate action to make the Arade safe seems easy to achieve but the minister’s announcement today serves again to highlight that when it come down to cost-effective investment in the Algarve, Lisbon conspires to ensure it simply never happens.
Meanwhile, Lisbon’s cruise ship passenger terminals have never been busier, bringing thousands of high-spending tourists to the city each week.
See also:
http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/6324-portimao-dock-expansion-might-start-in-2017-perhaps
