Editorial: Is there any future for our ports?

More than a decade ago the two ports of Limassol and Larnaca were overflowing with containers stacked ten-high arriving from the Far East and ready to be transshipped to Europe or other parts of the world. Major shipping and container transport companies set up their base here to monitor operations, creating job opportunities for locals and injecting money into the property markets and into state coffers in the form of port fees.

At the same time there were a couple of Free Zones dotted around the towns, usually near the ports or the industrial zones.

All these were revolutionary concepts that have since been overtaken by more efficient ports in the whole south east European and Middle Eastern regions.

The Cyprus ports have since been demoted to glorified fishing shelters or dock-side facilities for a handful of passenger ships, while the free zones have disintegrated into fenced fields with man-size weeds trying to escape over the rusted gates.

This is not so much an issue for the Ports Authority to upgrade its facilities or improve its tariffs, or even for the highly-unionised dock workers to offer their services during weekends.

Nothing can be done if there is no will from the government and if the system continues to lack a national policy on shipping and cargo transport and storage.

Does Cyprus want to attract international transshipment business and become a major player in the region as it used to be or are we content with remaining a backwater mid-size port provider with a few cranes and lazy old dock hands?

There are great untapped opportunities with international shipping and transshipment companies desperately looking for port storage facilities in the eastern Mediterranean area.

With the ports of Egypt flourishing with intercontinental traffic and the ports of Turkey making a turn towards energy supplies, the only logical stop would have to be Cyprus. But with uncompetitive services and in some cases poor facilities, it is no wonder that cargo transporters are looking further west.

It is unfortunate that the present coalition government is dead against the privatization of public services, even though it had no qualms about handing over the airports to a private sector partner.

If the state does not have a vision for shipping and is not prepared to do anything about the ports as it also seems to have difficulty finding suitable or friendly partners for marinas, then perhaps the time has come for the two main ports to be privatized while keeping the Ports Authority as a regulator and not an operator.