The red tape and the slothfulness with which containers are received in port facilities are some of the major deficiencies that feed the incompetence of the ports of the region.
Sometimes, a container can be shipped in 5 hours, but there are other times when it’s declared abandoned,”
said Otto Noack, executive director of the Central American Commission on Maritime Transport (COCOTRAM).
Noack explained that seven countries have been arguing for five decades about the need to integrate the port system in Central America without achieving any success.
Therefore, representatives of all the Central American countries, including Belize, met in Costa Rica on Tuesday, to exchange ideas, find solutions to problems regarding port management and operations and to seek a strategy for Central America to become a competitive region in the world of seaborne trade.
In recent years, the port system has increased cargo volumes and this manifests in statistics, taking into account that 57 million metric tons were mobilized in 2001, a figure that increased to 152 million in 2015.