China backing out of Jamaica transshipment port at Fort Augusta
The decision by industry leader Maersk to build ships larger than the expanded Panama Canal and sail instead through the Suez Canal between Asia and Europe is beginning to have its first major ripple effects.
Already port futurists including John Vickerman are predicting that Panama and not the Caribbean, nor Miami, will provide all the necessary transshipment terminals to deal with the increased volumn of post Panamax shipping through the canal.
Two years ago the head of the Panama Canal warned only three ports in the United States would benefit from the canal’s increased width with Virginia and New York/New Jersey at the top of that list.
Remove the Maersk volume from the equation and the expanded Panama Canal seems a far riskier proposition to sustain than it was when import growth in the US was predicted at 9 percent year over year, back in the silly days after Y2K.
The first sign that the charade was collapsing was the leak from PortaMiami Director, a career Dade County administrator, that he just might take that job over at the Beacon Council and let somebody else clean up the mess that is the port’s misguided masterplan.
Hopefully they can throw a net over Juan Kuryla before he accepts the Jaxport executive job and keep him in Miami, where he has been running the day-to-day of the port for years.
The second sign the Post Panamax fabric is coming part is much less subtle. Jerome Reynolds of the Jamaica, Gleaner was paying attention when Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller in her contribution to the Budget Debate disclosed that China Harbour Engineering Company, which had agreed to build a giant new transshipment facility at Fort Augusta is looking for a way out by suggesting that the lands at Fort Augusta are insufficient for its plans.
Fort Augusta is across a shallow, easily dredgeable bay from the Port of Kingston along the Kingston Highway.
China Harbour and the Port Authority of Jamaica had signed an Memorandum of Understanding to explore the plans to establish a new transshipment port at Fort Augusta.
Simpson Miller said because of the land issues the company has indicated that it no longer has an interest in the project as it is.
She said a new construction site is needed to accommodate the planned investment by China Harbour.
Simpson Miller said the project is to be implemented over a five year period and will see the construction of transshipment facilities, a logistics centre, industrial plants, a cement plant and possibly a power plant.
She said some 2,000 workers are to be employed during constructions and another 10,000 jobs are to be created if the project is completed. So the wishful thinking and hopeful promising from the politicians continues, even in the face of a less blurry reality.
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