Sicilian ports, also thanks to the Suez crisis, are increasingly strategic in the Mediterranean and can become a powerful engine for the development of the Blue economy in the entire South. This is why Alessandro Panaro, Head of Med&Energy of the Srm study center in Naples connected to Intesa Sanpaolo, will tomorrow at the conference “The sea inside” organized by the newspaper “La Sicilia” at the Marina Yachting Center in Palermo, illustrating the data on maritime traffic will propose three ways for the development of Sicily: investing in the sustainability and digitalisation of the ports and promoting production facilities on the island using the formidable tool of the Single Zes of the South.
The data
The Srm data speak clearly: Sicily has a strong maritime system, characterized by 3 Port System Authorities which together handle approximately 73 million tonnes of goods and over 27 million passengers. Maritime transport and logistics are a fundamental sector as they give an area efficiency in the internationalization processes of businesses and support for tourism needs. The region has a maritime trade equal to 27.6 billion euros (over 90% of the total) and this clearly demonstrates how much companies need increasingly modern and future-oriented ports.
The Ro-Ro sector (ships carrying wheeled vehicles) is one of the excellences of port traffic in Sicily, but also throughout the country. In fact, ports handle 24% of the national total. Therefore, Sicily could play an important role in container traffic. Furthermore, the presence of a notable number of tourist arrivals by sea and 1.7 million cruise passengers is further confirmation of a territory that must increasingly be oriented towards improving its maritime vocation and offering increasingly high-quality services and mobility .
The strategic nature of Sicilian ports
Adriano Giannola, president of Svimez, is also convinced of the strategic nature of Sicilian ports and, anticipating the main points of his speech at the conference, warns: “The choice of the government which created an ad hoc department on the sea entrusted to Nello Musumeci is to be appreciated . It is worrying, however, that the dispersion of delegations between different ministries regarding ports, under the responsibility of Matteo Salvini, and Zes, attributed to Raffaele Fitto, does not favor a unified approach to the problem which, instead, requires great attention, vision and timeliness for the high (and highly underestimated) strategic importance that the sea and ports have for the country”.
“Today – continues Giannola – the southern ports, in particular those of Gioia Tauro, Augusta, Palermo, Catania, Bari, Taranto and Naples, are as strategic if not more than those of Trieste and Genoa, to the extent that Italy intends regain its rightful status in the Mediterranean. A priority which, if it is vital for us, is increasingly vital for Europe too, in light not only of the ongoing wars and the energy emergency, but also due to the drastic restructuring and reconversion of globalisation”.
The highways of the sea
“In this perspective – analyzes the president of Svimez – the fact that the southern economy today contributes only 10% to national exports highlights how ineffective the attention to developing a network of connections with the southern shore of the Mare Nostrum and the ability to intercept traffic that passes through the Mediterranean from Suez and heads towards various destinations on the continent. For years, Svimez has been urging the development of maritime and railway intermodality which, in addition to playing a decisive role in the growth and connection between the coasts and internal areas of Southern Italy, is essential to give Italy its natural logistical centrality in the area”.
“The Motorways of the Sea – concludes Giannola –, in particular along the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic ridges, integrated with international rail connections, can represent innovative methods to be progressively made more and more substitutes rather than complementary to road transport. And the creation and transformation of port infrastructures into advanced logistics platforms, both in terms of capacity and services offered in connection with other Mediterranean hubs and with the European transport network, is a prospect of global strategic importance. The ports of Southern Italy are responsible for the prospective development of the Motorways of the Sea networks. Putting vision, strategy and cogent operational articulation into operation is now a more than mature project, the execution of which must accompany a Mediterranean reorganization of sustainable globalization in the Mediterranean”.
