The Canary Islands attract the interest of Turkish companies with Global Ports and cruise tourism

Türkiye's interests in the Canary Islands multiply. The company Global Ports has set out to manage tourist cruises, where the powerful business of transit to passenger airports, waste and port handling is located, with an investment of 40 million euros for the construction and operation of terminals in the ports of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Puerto Naos (La Palma); Los Mármoles (Lanzarote), and Puerto del Rosario (Fuerteventura). The country, in fact, already has a certain influence in four West African countries with which the Canary Islands have close and historical links for reasons of proximity: Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Mauritania.

The board of directors of the Las Palmas Port Authority, until 28-M in the hands of the PSOE, has accelerated permits so that the Turkish company does not suffer delays with the project of a cruise terminal. The port of Las Palmas is a domain, in cargo, of the shipping company Mediterranean Shipping (MSC), which until July 2022 negotiated the purchase of Global Ports, owned by the Turkish businessman Mehmet Kutman.

MSC will have the supplier it wanted to buy in Las Palmas. The public body awarded the award to Global Ports, which, through its subsidiary GPH Malta Finance, launched in 2023 on the Malta Stock Exchange an issue of €25 million in 6.25% secured and unsecured bonds, with expiration in 2030.

Most of the funds raised in Malta are for the group's investments already committed in Spain in the ports of Las Palmas and the cruise terminals of Tarragona and Alicante.. The Ukrainian crisis has made the mid-Atlantic a refuge destination for cruise tourism. In fact, traffic has once again reached the figures prior to the pandemic, with 1.3 million passengers and 644 stopovers in Arrecife, Puerto del Rosario and Las Palmas.. Within each facility, passengers generate a business of moving luggage, land and air transportation, waste, food supplies, and other structural items..

next fishing

In terms of fishing, Turkey is the country that has the most licenses in Mauritania, which is supplied from the islands. The Turkish fishing fleet is made up mainly of purse seiners, although it also has trawlers. Currently, around 1,000 Turkish fishermen work in these two types of boats, while they have hired as many Mauritanians. In addition, there are four fishmeal and fish oil factories in the country belonging to the Turks..

The companies are currently executing an estimated investment of 200 million dollars, either in public or private Mauritanian fish firms. Mauritania rents its fishing ground in exchange for money that would be centrifuged in Las Palmas; but in anticipation of these capital outflows, after a very recent bilateral agreement on fisheries, from 2021, Turkish financial institutions are settling with business banking licenses in the African country.

It is not so much the trade balance of the Canary Islands, but the geographical framework with airlines such as Sun Express, an alliance of Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines, which transports tourism from Germany, or Corendon Group, a Dutch brand with Turkish capital.. Global Ports has been established fiscally from the ZEC, the low tax platform of the archipelago. Canarian imports from Turkey are in the hands of Vidrieras Canarias, owned by Apollo and Bpifrance, Ahumados Canarios, Positrónica, Bolda de Aguas de La Palma, the JTI tobacco company, Insular de Gynecology, Bazar Sport, Colidamar, Comercial Alte Wolfgang Kuhn and Superstore.

Investments in Mauritania

The Canary Islands have been attracting some investments in the mining sector from Mauritania, offering fiscal incentives and institutional stability for the families of managers, but the African country has counterattacked and offers a defined state participation of up to 20% for this type of operation, a tax rate of 25%, corporate tax of 3.5% (Canary Islands offers 4%) and VAT exemption for the import of personal property, materials, equipment, vehicles and other investments in fixed assets.

As of early 2023, in mixed partnerships, there were 88 Turkish companies operating on the African continent with commitments worth $1.7 billion.. In the contracting sector, so far 1,777 projects have been undertaken in the African continent for a value of 82,800 million dollars. According to the regional distribution, there are planned investments of 56,000 million dollars in 1,330 projects in North Africa and 26,700 million dollars in 447 projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

MSC on the lookout

For its part, since 2023 MSC has launched its Turkey-Western Mediterranean-West Africa (Turkiye-West Med-WAF) service with eight ships to call at Tekirdag, Derince, Iskenderun, Gioia Tauro, Livorno, Genoa, Fos, Valencia , Las Palmas, Dakar, Abidjan, Tema, Lomé, Tincan Island and Lomé.

The attempted purchase of Global Ports Holding responded to the profits that it has been obtaining in recent years due to the increase in the freight rate in the transport of containers. After taking over Bolloré Africa Logistics (for 5,700 million euros) and entering the Italian cruise shipping company Moby Group for 80 million euros, MSC finalizes its offer in 2023 to take over Lufthansa for Alitalia's successor airline, which has 85 % of spaces at Milan Linate airport and 43% at Rome-Fiumicino international airport.