Africa-Press – Angola. Empresa Portuária do Amboim EP has established as a priority, for the year 2023, the dredging of the quays to facilitate maritime navigation and stimulate commercial activity in Porto Amboim, Cuanza Sul province, said yesterday the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Port Company of Amboim, Francisco Fernandes.
The manager said that there is a big problem with dredging the quays and that it will be solved with the concessions or allocation of licenses that we will grant to private operators to facilitate maritime navigation”.
“Right now, it is not in the pipeline to think about building a deep water port, but about revitalizing commercial activity in some terminals such as PAENAL, Estaleiro Atlântico do Amboim, Sonangol Distribuidora, SONAGÁS and Wang Festão and, all of this, passes in solving the dredging of the wharves to attract ship traffic and stimulate trade”, he underlined.
The PCA of Empresa Portuária do Amboim said that the possibility of granting other concessions to companies interested in investing in the waterfront under the management of their company was open, within the framework of the Port Planning Plan.
The Port Management Plan has existed since 2021, involving the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Transport and provides, among others, a plan to boost Porto Amboim, investments, a recapitalization plan, ship accesses and maritime signaling.
Regarding gains in concessions or licenses, he pointed out that the State will collect more revenue (volume of business) and for the port company, operators will have to pay fixed and variable rents (space rent) to be defined, as there are no stipulated prices and because there have never been charges in this regard.
Asked about the variable rent, Francisco Fernandes,
replied that “it is done this way due to the existing asymmetries in the port sector and because it still cannot be stimulated, nor compare a fee charged in Luanda and locally”.
He informed that at the moment the operators with whom they are negotiating do not have large investments, but there are prospects for the Government to bring a Naval Shipyard to Porto Amboim that will work with PAENAL and possibly with Sonangol”, he concluded.
Another bet is on training staff in the maritime area for the next five years, small cabotage with a passenger terminal.
Empresa Portuária do Amboim EP, without port activity itself, has the vision of “providing the municipality and the province with a logistics and port platform capable of leveraging the economic and social development of the central region, creating value for employees, families and shareholders and the country”.
Its mission is to “ensure modernization, automation and constant improvement in the provision of services to the port community, enhance human capital and take care of the surrounding environment under the terms of international maritime conventions”.
History of the Commercial Port
The first pier bridge at Porto Comercial in Porto Amboim, with a length of 115 meters, was built in 1927, but in 1956 a new pier bridge of equal length was built.
The Port Company of Amboim has had, since 2010, four PCAs.
A new project drawn up in 2017 aimed at building a modern Commercial Port in an area of 80 hectares and 30 for the dry port, whose pier bridge would initially receive two ships simultaneously and in the final phase seven ships.
For the physical execution, previous studies of environmental and sea impact have already been carried out.
The said Port would be built by a consortium composed of Sonangol Holding and Sogester with a 70 percent share and the remainder with private capital.
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