In an interview with CNA, Demetriades said that apart from the commercialisation of Cyprus’ trade hub his Ministry priorities include promoting Cyprus’ shipping industry, as well as implementing the President’s pledges for projects for each district of the island to boost the construction sector.
Demetriades’ comments came as the tender on the Limassol Port commercialisation enters its final phase, with 14 organisations submitting binding offers to attain concession agreements on one of the port’s licences, mainly the Container Terminal, the Marine Services and the Multipurpose Terminal.
“We are at the final stage as the submissions are being examined by the evaluation committee and I hope that we will be able to announce the preferred bidders within the next days,” he said, stressing that “this is a huge effort which began two years ago.”
He added that following the preferred bidder selection, the Parliament will be called to approve the transaction which is estimated to be finalised by March 31 2016.
Demetriades pointed out that the state proceeds will come from a signature bonus to be granted by the bidder but the majority of public revenue will come from a percentage of the administrator profits paid to the state.
He said Cyprus opted for this system as it wanted to encourage the administrator to attract additional operations and to grant them more flexibility.
Acknowledging that the Port’s current way of operation is not optimum, Demetriades said “we are confident that by attracting a private investor in combination with the broader restructuring underway of the port’s operations, we will be able to attract more operations, which would yield significant benefits for our economy, the city of Limassol, the employees and for job creation which is so needed in Cyprus.”
He pointed out that the global trend focuses on port administration by large organisations which cooperate with other ports.
“And this shows how significant this change is as we are promoting in port administration. Under the current administration, we cannot proceed forward,” he said and added that the port commercialisation “is a change long overdue but better late than never.”
Demetriades noted that following parliamentary approval, the Limassol port will operate under joint administration by the Cyprus Port Authority and the private administrator for a period of 6 to 9 months to facilitate a smooth transition until the year-end when the private administrator takes over.
Source: InCyprus
