The northern expansion of the Port of Valencia remains stuck in the Council of Ministers, which has been blocking authorization for the construction project of the new container dock to be managed by the shipping company MSC for a year now.. Sumar's rejection of this infrastructure and the advancement of the general elections are behind this delay, which has also forced a review of the originally budgeted cost..

The Board of Directors of the Port Authority of Valencia has approved a price update that is justified by inflation and the time that has passed since the project was estimated at almost 542.7 million euros for the public coffers.. However, “the continuous and persistent upward trend in prices” forces an upward review that, according to the organization chaired by Mar Chao, will commit a State investment of more than 660 million euros to complete the expansion of the Port.. In total, 118 million extra costs compared to what was initially calculated, that is, 21.7% more.

Private investment should be added to this amount, which MSC formally estimated at 1,050 million and which, however, must also be updated. The president of MSC Spain, Francisco Lorente, recently warned that the delays by the Government of Spain in giving the green light to the project would mean an increase in costs for the multinational that could be around 1.6 billion euros.. In other words, undertaking the northern expansion of the Port of Valencia will involve a larger outlay than initially planned of at least 700 million euros..

The initial budget of the project approved by the Port Authority in December 2022 – with the votes against Compromís – was formulated, however, much earlier, in the first quarter of 2021. To this we must add the fact that those forecasts were made in accordance with the prices of materials, machinery and labor corresponding to 2020.. “A year has passed since the project was approved and almost two years since the first cost calculation was made,” port sources justify..

According to the president of the port organization, this “has no influence whatsoever on the project that is pending approval by the Council of Ministers”. Chao insists that “the start of work on the new northern terminal is the undisputed number one objective” of his presidency, and the Valencian Government of Carlos Mazón and the City Council of María José Catalá have also positioned themselves along this line, which have weeks putting pressure together with the autonomous employers' association CEV and the logistics businessmen so that the Executive of Pedro Sánchez gives its final approval to some works that have not been free of controversy.

Compromís, and now Sumar, continue to demand a new environmental impact declaration for works that center the agenda of Valencian demands. To the point that the expansion of the Port will star in the day that the Conexus Foundation will celebrate on December 12 in Madrid to reactivate the economic axis between the Spanish capital and the Valencian capital..

In this context, we must not lose sight of the movements that MSC itself has been making in recent weeks, which today moves 1.5 million containers in Valencia and aspires to reach 5 million with the new terminal.. In this sense, the Geneva-based multinational threatened to paralyze an investment of 90 million euros in the ZAL of Valencia, the logistics area of the Port where it intended to build two warehouses.. The PP has already committed to finding a solution and accelerating the license for MSC, but the company revealed its intentions, linking them to “tiredness and exhaustion” due to the blocking of large projects.. The ZAL is one, but the new Port terminal is another.