Inaugurated Pier III of the container terminal of the Pireo managed from group COSCO



Yesterday in the port of the Pireo the Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has participated to the inauguration of a new dock of the container terminal managed from the Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT), society integrally controlled from the COSCO Pacific of the shipowning group Chinese COSCO that was represented to the ceremony, between the others, from president Wei Jiafu.

The new dock of Pier III, that it is constructed by PCT, will become operating the next month with the installation of two crane of super dock post-Panamax. PCT has begun to manage Pier II of the container terminal of the Greek port of call to end 2009 ( on 25 November 2008). In the course of the Wei Jiafu inauguration it has emphasized that when group COSCO has assumed the management of the terminal the system introduced a annual handling of traffic 166.000 pairs to container teu, while in the 2012 traffic has reached 2,1 million teu and in the 2013 it is previewed will go up to 2,5 million teu.

In its speech the Greek Prime Minister has remembered that, within how much previewed from the first contract of concession signed from the Chinese group with the Piraeus Porft Authority (PPA), with the inauguration of new dock COSCO he has completed an investment of beyond 340 million euros. Samaras has remembered moreover that the negotiations are on for stipulate it of a new agreement that, if completed and approved of from the competent European authorities, will involve by ulterior COSCO investments for 224 million euros and this will carry to the creation of 500 new permanent places of work and other 200 places of job for the three years of duration of the work of construction of new harbour infrastructures.

"In such a way - it has evidenced Samaras - the port of the Pireo, in its full development, with the new investments in argument, will acquire an ability 7,0 million container teu, investments for 580 million euros and the places of work will succeed in to exceed the 3,000 previewed units. The port of the Pireo, between the first five ports in Europe in terms of ability, will become first".

"Dear friends - he has concluded Samaras - the experience of the development of the Pireo of these last years us standard something a lot important: any is the intensity and the type of the crises, the answer is to invest in competitive fields and with the main productive and economic flows of our time, but also of the future. This is that has happened to the Pireo with COSCO and the Greek public part. And this collaboration must continue".