​Inter-port Compensation Fund's Allocation Committee unanimously approves the allocation proposal made by Puertos del Estado

The Inter-port Compensation Fund will allocate €52.5 million among the 28 Port Authorities

• The allocations for insularity, special isolation and ultraperipherality will amount to €14.7 million, 28% of the total allocated.
• The Port Land Accessibility Fund will finance 54 actions, which will entail a disbursement of €132 million in 2019.
• The meeting in Valencia revives the "tradition" of rotating the Fund's Committee's annual meetings through the ports.
  
   
  
   

11/26/2018 (Spanish Ministry of Public Works and Transport). The Inter-port Compensation Fund's Allocation Committee, which met in Valencia and composed of the 28 Authorities that make up the Spanish State-owned port system, under the chairmanship of Ornella Chacón, has unanimously approved the proposal to allocate the €52.5 million. Of that amount, €4.8 million is allocated to the "Port Plan 4.0", and the remaining €47.4 million will be directly distributed among the Port Authorities.

Of this latter amount, €7.6 million correspond to navigation aids, €14.8 million are allocated to the Port Authorities of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Las Palmas, Ceuta, Melilla and the Balearic Islands due to their insularity, special isolation and ultraperipherality, €1.6 million correspond to security actions and €23.4 million are distributed among a large number of Port Authorities for various kinds of finance actions.

Puertos del Estado's proposal presented by Ornella Chacón increases the contributions of the Port Authorities from 4% to 5%, in order to make effective the agreement of the Fund's Committee to allocate 1% of its budget to the "Port Plan 4.0". This percentage will represent an estimated value of €4.8 million in 2019. Given that the mentioned agreement extends for a period of 4 years, and that, in general, the resources generated by the Port Authorities are increasing, it is expected to allocate an amount of more than €20 million to this Plan.

On a one-off basis, Puertos del Estado's contribution for 2019 will rise from €6.5 million to €8.5 million in order to meet the needs expressed by various Port Authorities receiving items from the Fund, which confirms this Public Body's unequivocal commitment to a vehicle for redistributing resources of the State-owned port system that aims to guarantee the system's self-financing and enhance fair competition between the Spanish ports. In short, it is about facilitating and strengthening the Spanish territory's structure, and especially that of the coastal areas where nearly 60% of the Spanish population lives.

• THE PORT LAND ACCESSIBILITY FUND WILL FINANCE ACTIONS AMOUNTING TO €131.8 MILLION IN 2019

In addition, the President of Puertos del Estado has proposed to the Committee the new programming of actions to be financed by the Port Land Accessibility Fund. In total, after approval by the Fund's Allocation Committee, this Fund is allocating 627.3 million euros (€M) to a set of 54 actions representing a total investment of €1,053.7 million for the period between 2015 and 2023

This new financing amount charged to the Fund is 12% higher than that previously approved, which reflects a clear interest by the Port Authorities to continue contributing to improve terrestrial access to ports.

Of the total amount channeled through the Port Land Accessibility Fund, 46% corresponds to "last mile" linear actions (16 projects providing a new direct connection to the port or improvement of the existing one), 33% are oriented to improving existing linear infrastructures in the general network (24 actions) and the remaining 23% is focused on creating or improving terminals, which is collected in 14 projects.

Once again, rail is the main mode of transport, receiving 92% of the funding provided by the Fund to improve terrestrial access, split into 40 actions. The remaining 14 actions focus on road access improvements.

Annuities with amounts greater than €100 million are concentrated between 2019 and 2021. In particular, the one corresponding to the 2019 budget year, is the maximum with an expected allocation of €131.8 million. The cumulative investment expected to be executed by the end of this year amounts to €95.6 million.

Ornella Chacón concluded the meeting thanking all the Port Authorities for the effort made so that the Fund has a greater economic endowment for 2019 to be able to meet any urgent or unexpected needs of those ports of general interest with greater difficulties in attending to them.

The President of the Port Authority of Valencia, Aurelio Martínez, accompanied the representatives of Puertos del Estado and the rest of the Port Authorities in a visit in which they had the opportunity to find out about the Port of Valencia's expansion plans that are already in progress. The holding of the meeting of the Inter-port Compensation Fund's Allocation Committee at the Port of Valencia entails reviving a tradition that was in force until 2010, in which the meeting is rotated annually and held in a port city, and serves to strengthen the sense of being a port system that shape the 28 Port Authorities.