If the President of the Federation of Shipping Agents Italians, Alessandro Santi, had warned to be cautious with the Hypotheses of privatization of ports recently put forward by Government representatives ( of 6 September 2024), from La Spezia we invite you to evaluate the example of privatization carried out in the Ligurian port of call. "The only port where a private individual has built his terminal, starting from the docks up to the cranes passing through squares, offices, computer system - said Andrea Fontana, representing the port community of La Spezia and president of the La Spezia Association of Shipping Agents - was La Spezia. And when it comes to the privatization of airports Italian seafarers perhaps could not and should not to disregard this successful experience that is and remains A unicum".

"Italy," Fontana pointed out, "is truly a A strange country in which even in the face of successful experiences, the desire to reinvent everything and rewrite rules prevails and parameters. In the case of the La Spezia Container Terminal, considered also for its indisputable successes, an anomalous cell of the national ports, the formula was so much Simple to appear trivial today. A private entrepreneur has put to work resources to finance the construction of a terminal container that did not exist, set it up and made it work with efficiency and productivity standards for years unreachable elsewhere. For its part, the State through its local emanations, which were not yet called Authorities of Port System, has calibrated the times and values of the concession so that the private entrepreneur was able to make square an industrial plan, recoup its investment and make profits".

Today we are back to talking about the privatization of ports and direction when - continued Fontana - the primary need would be to ensure national planning of the resources allocated to ports while today each Authority of the Port System receives public resources and builds quays and terminals that will probably not be of use to anyone and will not be able to be managed economically. "It is appropriate to state clearly - concluded Fontana - that for years now the traffic that gravitates around Italian ports has a stationary trend and and a record increase in the supply of handling services of goods, especially containers, such as the one in progress, will obtain only one result: that of generating another gigantic hole in the public accounts".

If it is true that, as Fontana observes, Italy is really a strange country, perhaps it is also because when public resources are allocated to the construction of quays and terminals that probably will not be of use to anyone and will not be able to be managed economically, none, but absolutely no representative of the national port system assumes the responsibility to denounce in no uncertain terms what they are the works intended to fuel the waste of public money. At if anything, they are associations of citizens or environmentalists who, sometimes rightly and sometimes around, they demonstrate against those who They consider projects senseless.