Latin American and Caribbean ports must continue to invite the private sector to become more competitive through infrastructure and technology modernization, Jorge Durán, section chief of the Inter-American Commission on Ports (CIPI), told Acan-Efe.
The Mexican expert, during an interview at the 12th Maritime Port Congress being held in Guatemala City, said that since financing is one of the obstacles to port modernization, authorities should invite businessmen to join this effort.
"Modernizing a port's infrastructure goes beyond having a legal basis and good intentions"The economic resources for this development are the most important bottleneck or bottleneck," he emphasizes.
The way in which countries in the hemisphere have dealt with this is by inviting the private sector as a partner for the development of ports and one example, he explains, is his country, Mexico, which is investing 4,000 billion dollars in the sector, of which 80% is contributed by businessmen, a proportion that is repeated in Argentina.
In Central America, however, he continues, “Ports are undergoing a phase of modernization that includes them as nodes in the supply chain"with the promotion of laws and modernization of "hard and soft" infrastructure with sustainable management.
Environmental sustainability “has to be an inherent part of any development plan” in order not to be at a disadvantage, he stressed.
“All ports must be certified by ISO 10401, because there are other bodies that certify environmental protection management,” but if they do not have environmental sustainability “they are at a disadvantage,” he sums up.
The Mexican expert argues that now that climate change, global warming, natural disasters and environmental degradation are so fashionable, “it is extremely important that ports that are under environmental management do so in a sustainable manner.”
Qualification
In this sense, the ports of any country have to consider from now on, in their development processes, the management plan must be sustainable, and to be able to be certified as a “green port"The authorization has to come from Europe, a process that "is very long and expensive."
Thus, several Latin American countries are considering whether the CIPI of the Organization of American States (OAS) should have the authority and conditions to carry out the checks and certifications of a “green port” in the hemisphere, so as not to depend on the old continent.
This idea arose last July during a meeting in Montevideo (Uruguay), and Mexico has provided resources for seed capital to support this advisory process.
Durán, one of the main exhibitors at the 12th Maritime Port Congress organized under the motto: “Port Modernization, an unavoidable challenge”, insists that this The process of technological and infrastructure modernization must not forget the environment so as not to polluter.
In his opinion, the challenge for ports to become more competitive is to invest in infrastructure to have larger vessels and new technology, but also to protect the environment and have sustainable port management.
In global logistics performance in 2016, Germany ranked firstar, while the United States is 10th, Canada is 14th, Panama is 40th, and Guatemala is 111th.
These data show that the country with the best quality of port infrastructure in the region is Panama, with a score of 6.3 out of 7 points, while Nicaragua is at the bottom with 2.8.
In the connectivity index, Panama is also at the top, followed by Guatemala.
Source:The new diary
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