The Regional Government of Madeira will once again launch an international tender to operate a weekly connection in ferry boat between Funchal and Portimão, for the transport of cargo and passengers.
This time, the Madeira Regional Government raised the bar and promises an amount of 3 million euros per year, "as compensatory indemnities during the three years of the concession period", said the newspaper Público, a model already authorized by the concession on Monday. European Union. The contest should be launched "in the coming weeks".
This is the second attempt to find someone interested in guaranteeing this line, which already operated between June 2008 and January 2012, after there were no interested parties in the contest launched in early 2016.
Hence the inclusion of the incentive, which will be guaranteed by the Regional Budget and aims to make a service that has been (very) deficient in the past more attractive, and which faces great competition, namely from airlines between the mainland and the archipelago.
However, the tender specifications have already been put forward by the Madeira regional press and «determines that the operator must make at least one weekly connection between Funchal and Portimão, without interruption, with the ship necessarily having sufficient speed (at least 21 knots , about 39 km/h) to complete the trip in less than 24 hours, and a minimum capacity to accommodate 300 passengers».
The specifications of the vessels to be used will also be defined, which can only be a maximum of 175 meters in length, with the draft not exceeding 6,5 meters, so that it can maneuver in the Port of Funchal.
It remains to be seen whether the 3 million a year will be enough to convince shipowners to bet on this connection. The previous concessionaire, Naviera Armas de Espanha, “has accumulated a loss of around 6 million euros, after operating on the Las Palmas-Funchal-Portimão line for a year and a half”, according to Jornal Económico Madeira, which led him to give up.
In the first tender, launched in January of last year, there were already some incentives, such as the reduction of port fees (total exemption in the first year of operation), the choice by shipowners of the ports of origin and destination, a mobility subsidy passengers, similarly to what happens in air connections, incentives to import raw materials and a check for 80 thousand euros for an advertising campaign in the national market, but they did not arrive to convince the operators who raised the specifications.
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