Praia, Cape Verde, 26 Aug – The chairman of Cape Verdean port management company, Enapor - Portos de Cabo Verde, Franklim Spencer, said Wednesday in Praia that over the next year 80 percent of the country’s ports would have modern facilities.

Speaking to Cape Verdean news agency Inforpress, Spencer said he believed that by then all the country’s ports would be able to receive container ships and those that use other technologies, namely horizontal transport ships.

Spencer also said that the process of modernisation of Cape Verde’s ports aimed to provide the country with port facilities to make it possible to comply with the development plan drawn up by the government and which aims to make the country into a logistics hub in the mid Atlantic.

Enapor is the state company that manages the archipelago’s nine port facilities, one on each island, including the three international ports, Praia (Santiago island), Porto Grande (Sao Vicente), which receive large-draught ships, and Palmeira (Sal island).

In August 2009, Spencer had pointed to 2012 as the year in which Cape Verde would be prepared to compete with all ports, especially using the port of São Vicente, at which the government plans to create an "economic centre" with a duty free area.

The projection is for growth from 150/200 to 400/500 ships and increase the number of re-exported containers from 2,000 to 4-5,000, whilst also serving as a platform for oil company ships in the mid Atlantic.

According to the Enapor chairman, in 2012, when the port sector investment plan will have been concluded on several islands, totalling 300 million euros, Cape Verde will have a “much more dynamic” sector with “capacity to project its (economic) development.” (macauhub)