WASHINGTON: The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) is looking to rehabilitate and develop more ports next year in a bid to further push inter-island connectivity via roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) ferry services. PPA General Manager Jay Daniel R. Santiago said the agency will pursue some port rehabilitation projects left by the previous government. “We have a lot of port developments by next year, we’re finalizing all of the development plans that we’re doing, there are a lot of proposed port facility developments which has been left by the previous administration and which we’ve studied and some of them we will pursue. There will be new locations that we will build on, but then there are a lot of ports also which need rehabilitation — so we will either rehabilitate or upgrade the ports,” Mr. Santiago told reporters recently.
In particular, he said the agency will rehabilitate the Iloilo port and Abra de Ilog in Mindoro, expand the port in General Santos City, while pursuing an ongoing rehabilitation and construction of a passenger terminal building in Cagayan de Oro. The PPA also announced it is looking to start the development of the Davao Sasa Port by early next year and possibly fund the project — estimated to be about P4.7 to about P4.9 billion — internally. “We’ll rehabilitate and develop both big and small ports, since we’re trying to pursue the need for inter-island connectivity through the RoRos,” Mr. Santiago said. PPA is also looking to develop more international container terminals nationwide to improve volume particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao. “We’re planning to look at and develop more container, more international container terminals in locations outside of Manila — in the Mindanao area. We’re also looking at putting up in international container terminal in Central Visayas in order to improve the volume,” he added. “The planned international container terminals will be owned and operated by the PPA,” he added.
The volume of cargo passing through the country’s ports rose 9% in the first nine months of the year, PPA earlier reported, citing the growing economy and the rush to have goods in stores by the Christmas season. Throughput hit 183.73 million metric tons (MMT) in January to September period compared with the 168.074 MMT logged a year earlier. Foreign volumes rose by 12.72%, boosted by a 15% increase in exports to 55.134 MMT for the period in review. Domestic volume, meanwhile, grew modestly by 3.87% to 67.139 MMT. PPA said the increases in cargo volume were observed at ports in Agusan, Mindoro, Bicol, Western Leyte/Biliran and Negros Oriental. Siquijor and the North Port remains the top performer in terms of domestic cargo volume, followed by Cagayan de Oro, Davao and Zamboanga. Container traffic, on the other hand, registered a 9.36% increase in volume for the nine months with 4.684 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).
