The contract for the construction of the cruise terminal in São Vicente should be signed next week, pending the Cape Verdean government’s statement of no objection from the Netherlands, which is funding the work, on the consortium chosen, it said on Tuesday.
According to the minister of maritime economy, the project, one of the largest in Cabo Verde at the moment, has a donation of €10 million – out of an estimated total of over €26 million – from the Dutch Orio Fund and by the OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) Fund for International Development, which must decide on the winning consortium of the public tender, which has not yet been revealed.
“Just today I received a message from Enapor that they are finalising the contract for the ‘non-objection’ of the financier (…) They [the Dutch government] have to give the ‘non-objection’ to sign the deal, so I hope that this ‘non-objection’ is still this week, so that next week the winners can be announced and they can sign the contract,” Minister Paulo Veiga told Lusa on the sidelines of an official act in Praia on Tuesday.
According to an earlier note from Enapor, the state company that manages the country’s ports, the first phase of the public tender for this project ended in August last year with the pre-selection of five groups of contractors, involving Afcons Infrastructures (India), Conduril Engenharia (Portugal), consortium Mota-Engil/Empreitel Figueiredo (Portugal/Cape Verde), consortium Sogea-Satom/Dumez Maroc (France/Morocco) and Soletanche Bachy International (France).
Cabo Verde launched this process over a year ago, but it has suffered successive delays, starting in 2020 due to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva announced last 15 February that construction work on the terminal was due to begin in March.
“At the beginning of March we will be awarding the contract,” the prime minister said, although at the time he did not reveal the consortium of companies selected in the public tender.
Questioned by Lusa about this new delay in the process, with the country less than a month away from legislative elections (18 April), the minister for the maritime economy said that these setbacks are part of the process, taking into account the standards imposed because it involves a donation from another country.
“This is the only reason why [the winner of the tender] has not yet been announced, but we expect to sign the contract next week so that the construction work can begin as soon as possible,” said Paulo Veiga.
The cruise terminal on Sao Vicente island will be one of the biggest recent public investments in the archipelago and is expected to receive 200,000 cruise tourists per year. It includes constructing two pontoons for mooring ships that are more than 400 metres long, and there will be a tourist village.
The work will involve claiming a 2,700 square metre area of land, called the “Land Bridge”, and dredging approximately 124,000 cubic metres in the port basin and access channel.
Among other features, the project also includes the construction of a 400-metre-long mooring pontoon with a draft of 11 metres and another 450 metres long with a draft of 9.5 metres and a 12-metre-wide pier, a passenger terminal, a tourist village and a real estate zone.
It also plans to build a tourist reception building of around 900 square metres and facilities of 6,150 square metres for parking taxis and support buses.
Eight ports in Cabo Verde received over 18,000 tourists on cruise ships in 2020, a number that Covid-19 pandemic reduced by 63.4% compared to 2019.
According to the annual traffic report prepared by Enapor, 40 cruise ships docked in 2020, half of them – and 10,690 tourists – at Porto Grande, city of Mindelo, São Vicente island, built in 1962.
