Eurispes, Sicily 3.0 the design of a new integrated mobility system
Saverio Romano, President of Eurispes’ Observatory for Southern Italy: «Investments in infrastructure are the only ones that create real wealth and can get us out of the economic crisis created by the Covid-19. Public investment at 1.8% of GDP: an alarming statistic. Yes to a hub port in Palermo: a logistics platform in the Mediterranean is an incredible resource for the entire South».
«Talking about recovery in the absence of a policy, an overall project and an investment plan is a sterile exercise. Investments in infrastructure are the only ones that create wealth and employment, and the only ones that can reduce the gap between the country’s territories. In the 1990s, public investment stood at 3% of GDP, while in the more recent pre-Covid-19 period it stopped at under 1.8% and the trend, under ordinary conditions, is for a further reduction. To this must be added that public co-financing of infrastructure investments has fallen from around 90% in the 1980s and 1990s, to 50% in 2000, to the current level of around 30%, and this trend is unfortunately set to continue.
Therefore, any real prospect of growth in the South cannot disregard investment in infrastructure projects. The transport sector, in this perspective, plays a crucial role in the life of modern society, ensuring the mobility of people and goods within the territory with the supply of primary goods to the population, and has always played a key role in overcoming any economic, health and social crisis, such as the recent Covid-19 crisis, which proved to be of epochal proportions and with serious repercussions on the global economy.
Nowadays, the need to support the financing of infrastructures in a logic of co-financing between the public and private sectors also arises at the European level. The European Commission itself emphasises that economic competitiveness depends on the timely implementation of integrated infrastructure within the internal market for maritime, air and rail transport, energy and communications.
The maritime transport scenario has undergone decisive changes in recent years, determined above all by the phenomenon of gigantic ships that produce economies of scale. These large commercial ships, indeed, due to their size (420 metres long and 60 metres wide), can no longer pass through the Panama locks and reach Europe through the Suez Canal, which has reduced crossing times with recent works. Southern European and Mediterranean ports, with the exception of Port Said, do not have the structural characteristics and equipment to berth these large ships which, as a result, are forced to cross the Mediterranean, circumnavigate the Iberian Peninsula and reach the Northern Range ports to unload their goods for Europe, taking four days longer. Today, around 20% of the world’s commercial traffic passes through the Mediterranean, and 2020 estimates predict a container handling in Southern Europe of over 70 million per year compared to 116 million per year in Northern Europe, where Rotterdam, today the leading commercial port in Europe, alone handles over 14 million per year. But Rotterdam – now that the best Asia-Europe route passes through Suez – is out of the most economical route, so we need to find a site in the centre of the Mediterranean for a hub port. And what better site than Palermo? A hub port for transhipment in the centre of the Mediterranean would make not only the Asia-Europe routes cheaper, but also those to North Africa and the Americas.
All this to explain how important it is in the maritime transport economy to have a hub port in the middle of the Mediterranean. But a hub port is also of great importance for the territory that hosts it. Sicily, and the South of Italy, cannot miss this opportunity.
A hub port in Palermo, with its barycentric position, would in fact represent a natural junction between the East and West Mediterranean basins and would become, with an annual handling of 16 million containers, the first in Europe. Moreover, Palermo is the closest place to the Suez-Gibraltar route, has a good seabed, borders the railroad and is only a few hundred metres from the motorway junction. The construction of a commercial port in Palermo, with the more than four hundred thousand jobs that it would create with the allied industries, is an unmissable development opportunity not only for Sicily, but for the entire South». Saverio Romano, President of Eurispes’ Observatory for Southern Italy, said.
The report Sicily 3.0: the design of a new integrated mobility system and the role of a logistics platform in the Mediterranean is available at the following link
