The present harbour installations in Santiago de Cuba, the Cuba’s second largest city, are to be updated with financial assistance from China in order to turn the port into a modern, efficient window to the Caribbean and South America.
This large multipurpose maritime terminal for Santiago de Cuba will convert the present harbour into an efficient installation for industry and trade.
Advanced credit for that purpose was included in the almost thirty agreements signed recently in Havana on the occasion of the visit to Cuba by the Chinese delegation headed by President Xi Jinping.
A two hundred meter long dock will become a multipurpose maritime terminal capable of handling modern ships and equipped with large dockside cranes, rail and road connections and ample storage facilities.
Dredging operations will increase the tonnage of vessels up to forty thousand tons, where today only ships of up to twenty five
thousand tons can dock.
Named after Guillermon Moncada, in homage to one of the leading Cuban generals during the independence war from Spain, the port installations will handle almost all the imports destined for the Eastern-most provinces of Cuba.
This improvement of cargo facilities at the port of Santiago de Cuba is part of plan for the modernization and revamping of all the 25 main
ports across the country.
Cuba has readied last January the megaport of Mariel, just West of Havana, with financial support from Brazil.
Mariel is now the largest port in Cuba, and will handle most of the
shipping operations formerly conducted at the port of Havana, to the east, which will be developed as a tourist destination.
When the updating of the port of Santiago de Cuba is finished and many other port installations are improved, Cuba will have tripled its potential for loading and unloading operations.
The increase in work productivity has substantial financial aspects
not the least the fact that ships will be loaded and unloaded promptly and will thereby avoid penalties for overstaying at the ports.
The developments at Mariel and now Santiago are no less than a exciting glimpse into the Cuba of the future.
