The Minister for the Sea suddenly has become all interested in Portimão, having ignored the city's cries for grown-up cruise ship facilities throughout her tenure.
With a general election due in the Autumn of 2019, Ana Paula Vitorino has decided that this Algarve port should become the region’s largest for the cruise market, which it is anyway, and for commercial vessels.
An Environmental Impact Study into the dredging of the Arade River’s navigation channel and turning space for larger ships, “is in progress and should be submitted to the Portuguese Environment Agency in September,” according to her latest update. Vitorino does not mention how long this submission is likely to be pondered.
In February 2018, the administrators of the Ports of Sines and the Algarve launched a public tender to carry out this Environmental Impact Study for the dredging and widening project and gave the lucky winner a full five years within which to complete the study.
The Minister now says this report will be finished and submitted this September, which seems unlikely in the extreme as the clunking management at the Ports of Sines and the Algarve mentioned a completion date of July 2020.
This preliminary work, for a project that will cost about €18 million, will allow larger ships to dock at the quayside and increase tourist numbers for the city.
Ana Paula Vitorino was at the official reception ceremony for the summertime ferry service to Madeira, when she outlined her plans for Portimão.
In addition, Portimão Council now is looking into a establishing ferry service linking Portimão to Spain and Morocco. This is hardly a new proposal but it gets wheeled out when elections are in the air, as does a Faro to Morocco route.
This simple to do dredging to open up the cruise ship market was referred to as a ‘no brainer’ by the former Economy Minister, Pires de Lima who promised an immediate €10 million ... in 2013.
Local businesses have heard it all before and the current government has done zero to deepen the river and lengthen the quayside in all the time it has been talking about it.
