The €21 million improvement project for the port of Figueira da Foz was signed this Friday, six years after it was announced, to increase capacity and facilitate maritime access.
The project to improve maritime accessibility and infrastructure at the port of Figueira da Foz was signed on Friday, at a cost of around €21 million, six years and four governments after it was announced.
At the signing ceremony for the contract, formalized between the Figueira da Foz Port Authority (APFF) and the company Mota-Engil, the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, said that the investment “has an absolutely immeasurable multiplier effect.”
Following the example of the Mayor of Figueira da Foz, Pedro Santana Lopes, who moments earlier had emphasized that, currently, in Portugal, the only topics of discussion are theft of suitcases and partisan dismissals, Miguel Pinto Luz stressed that the mayor “had touched a sore spot.”
"The country is preoccupied with discussing other issues, and this issue [of ports] is not a central one. The journalists wanted to question me down there about TAP and ANA, and rightly so, they are part of my responsibilities, I have been answering these questions all week, I am happy to do so, but it is also up to us to have this integrity, this effort to focus the attention of the Portuguese people on the problems that really matter," argued the minister.
“The citizens of Figueira, in this region, all know how long this investment has been awaited. When we see what is being discussed in the country's main news outlets, between airport baggage and party layoffs, we naturally think about how little attention is paid to issues like these,” Santana Lopes emphasized.
Eduardo Feio, president of APFF, presented the project — which will allow ships up to 140 meters long to dock, instead of the current 120 meters, and with a greater draft. and is estimated at €20.88 million, an amount that could reach €21.9 million due to price revisions — noting that the environmental impact study took five years and was only completed in September 2023.
Announced in April 2019 by the Minister for the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, to be completed in 2021, the project, then budgeted at around €17 million, was initially postponed because it did not meet the criteria required for European funding, namely the lack of an environmental assessment, and the application for European funds, submitted three days before the deadline, was rejected.
However, according to the schedule presented, the technical and financial studies date back to 2016, meaning that more than 10 years will have passed between the start of the process and the date set for the end of the intervention (May 2026).
In the meantime, in September 2019, even before the refusal, a protocol was signed between APFF, port operators, and the main companies that use the infrastructure, which provided for private participation in financing the works, which remains in place, although for amounts higher than those agreed upon.
According to data released today, European funding remains at around €9.1 million, APFF is investing €8.4 million, and the four private partners (including the paper manufacturers Navigator and Celbi and port operators) are investing around €4.4 million, roughly 20% of the total investment.
Among other works, the intervention aims to deepen the navigation channel by 2.5 meters at the entrance to the bar (from 8 to 10.5 meters) and by 1.5 meters inside the Mondego River, between the banks, as well as widening the commercial port's berthing quay and demolishing the two jetties of the old cod fishing dock and depositing more than 700,000 cubic meters of dredged sediment on the beaches to the south.
In July 2020, the work was postponed, with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing, then headed by Pedro Nuno Santos, justifying this by the need to reallocate funds from projects that were not yet underway to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that the necessary funding would be available in 2021.
Finally, at the end of 2020, the environmental authority was in favor of the intervention, although it was conditional on the completion of several studies and a review of the project, specifically related to identified underwater archaeological heritage or issues related to precautions to be taken in the intervention near the pillars of the Edgar Cardoso bridge, which lasted until 2023, with the tender finally being launched in January last year.
Source: https://observador.pt