PCP wants to know if works at the Port of Portimão will be ready by 2020

The PCP wants to know what measures the Government will take to ensure the completion of the works at the Port of Portimão by 2020. 

A delegation of communists, including the deputy Paulo Sá elected by the Algarve, visited «the Commercial Port of Portimão and met with representatives of the Administration of the Ports of Sines and Algarve (APS), having been informed that the Investment Plan for 2018 is still had not been approved», reads a communiqué from the PCP.

«The Investment Plan contemplates, in particular, a series of works in the Commercial Port of Portimão, namely the deepening and widening of the navigation channel and the rotation basin, allowing the reception of cruise ships up to 272 meters in length».

“The fact that the Investment Plan has not been approved means that the APS has to ask the tutelage for specific authorizations to carry out the works in the Commercial Port of Portimão, a circumstance that delays the entire process”, says the PCP.

Last July, Ana Paula Vitorino, Minister of the Sea, visiting Portimão, revealed that the Environmental Impact Study of dredging in the inland navigation channel and in the maneuvering basin of the Portimão cruise port is in progress.

These are, for the communists, works that "should have been carried out for a long time."

In July 2012, the Parliamentary Group of the PCP presented to the Assembly of the Republic the draft resolution no. 430/XII/1st, “Stimulation of port activity as an instrument for economic development in the Algarve region”, including recommendations regarding the Commercial Port of Portimão, among which the deepening and widening of the navigation channel and the rotation basin.

This bill was, at the time, rejected with votes against by the PSD and CDS and the abstention of the PS. In 2013, the «PSD presented a draft resolution on the Algarve's port sector and the PSD/CDS Government hastened to announce investments in the Commercial Port of Portimão that would allow it to increase its capacity to receive cruise ships, both in number, either in dimension. However, these investments never came out of the paper», denounces the PCP.

More recently, in November 2017, the current Government approved the Strategy to Increase the Competitiveness of the Mainland Commercial Ports Network – Horizonte 2026, which includes a project to improve maritime accessibility to the Port of Portimão.