Government by deception

The Nationalist government is still trying to deceive us about the Malta Freeport, the only port that can now handle our exports and imports and an indispensable infrastructure for our islands.

For many years, Government's politics of deception was delivered through an incessant public relations campaign with a focused message: the Freeport is a huge success story and we must honour its chairman Marin Hili with a national monument.

Then, after the last general election, when Government admitted that the Malta Freeport was a huge loss-making operation and must now be privatised to make it viable and get some money to address the structural deficit and public debt, Government handed Malta Freeport to the French company CMA-CGM whose agents are the Hili family.

Mr Hili got the biggest monument on these islands because CMA-CGM got Malta's only port for 30 years while Malta's taxpayers will have to pay for the huge debts built up by Malta Freeport.

Government promised that under CMA-CGM control, Malta Freeport would solve all the problems it had under Maltese (including Mr Hili's) management! But these problems, rather than being solved, are growing into a fully grown tumour that is having serious and tangible consequences on all sectors of the economy, be they the Freeport and its employees, shipping agencies, importers and exporters.

No sector is being spared. When CMA-CGM now sneezes, our economy catches a cold; thanks to the way the Nationalist government has mismanaged the privatisation of the Malta Freeport. Government's politics of deception goes on, this time by trying to ignore the problems at the Malta Freeport and keeping silent to make these problems invisible on the national agenda.

The Nationalist government has handed over Malta's only operational port to a selected shipping line whose local agents are well connected to the party in government. This has been done to the detriment of all other shipping agencies, the Freeport and its employees, industrialists, importers and all the rest of us.

Government must not be allowed to ignore what is going on at the Freeport and what is happening to our sea links with the rest of the world.

Government still has the obligation to see that Malta Freeport operates efficiently and provides an adequate service to all our importers and exporters and now that it is controlled by a shipping company does not discriminate against other competitors using the Freeport.

Fewer links with the world

Since Malta Freeport's privatisation, Malta's links with the rest of the world have deteriorated. Freeport did not lift a finger to keep the EPIC service and CP Ships' own shipping services from moving away to Cagliari. This is the shape of things to come, now that most of the Freeport business is under the grip of just one shipping line (CMA-CGM) and one shipping agent.

Everything must be done to attract more shipping lines to use the Malta Freeport. We must ensure that our vital interests (and not just those of CMA-CGM) are being promoted.

The Federation of Industries and the Chamber of Commerce are expected to speak up openly on the way the Malta Freeport is being run and the impact it is having on our exporters and importers. The Union Óaddiema Maghqudin must also remain vigilant to protect its members at the Malta Freeport. There is a drop in business at the Freeport and this is having an effect directly and indirectly on many companies and employees in the importing and exporting sectors.

Shipping agencies and companies that service them have, like us, to bear the brunt of the mess created by Nationalist government at the Malta Freeport. The Turkey-Malta service has been stopped by UFS. Now only CMA-CGM operates a ship on this trade. Both the Sagitta J (UFS ship) and CMA-CGM's vessel Aaron are small ships on the Adriatic-Malta service and often containers are not loaded to Malta for three to four weeks.

Right up to the Freeport privatisation, UFS had bigger ships (m.v. Markborg) operating regularly on the Adriatic run. They changed the ship to a smaller one in October 2004. There are five schedules of feeders combined between UFS and CMA- CGM and issued by Focal Maritime, agents for UFS. Until September 30, 2004, a high number of feeders were operating to Malta.

Around October 5, UFS still had a big ship (the Gudrun that now replaced the Markborg). Then around October 26 the feeder services were reduced, at a time when seasonal factors (such as Christmas) should have seen an increase in trade and more feeders coming to Malta. 

During the first half of January, UFS had no ship on the Adriatic service because following the Freeport privatisation, they were seriously considering withdrawing completely and leaving CMA-CGM to run the service on their own.

Transhipment traffic to Adriatic ports has dropped too, because like the Black Sea, the Adriatic has been seeing shipping lines calling directly and therefore the volumes passing through Freeport have dropped.

UFS then brought in the Sagitta J during the second half of January but this is a small ship and the two ships together (Sagitta J and Aaron) have not kept up with demand, hence resulting in containers being left behind because CMA-CGM give priority to their transhipment containers to Malta 

When his happens, many importers and exporters are constrained to look around for different shipping agents to try to ship their cargo, and this is what has been happening recently.

One does not need to be a Nobel Prize winner in economics to understand why CMA-CGM went in for the privatisation deal of the Freeport when they knew that mother ships were sailing from Asia direct to the Black Sea and Adriatic ports, and this meant less traffic passing though the Freeport.

They took a gem of a port in the central Mediterranean and at such a strategic location (equidistant between Gibraltar and Suez Canal) because the price was so unbelievably good for them. CMA-CGM will not be paying our country over the 30-year period. The Nationalist government has made the deal so that Malta's taxpayers will be paying for it.

The exercise that was worked out of the privatisation documents showed in no uncertain terms that we are paying more than we are earning over the 30-year period. The deal was so much in CMA-CGM's favour that they can afford to 'guarantee' workers jobs or to buy their redundancy through handshakes.

Several employees no longer work for Focal and this has coincided with UFS's curtailment of services. A big shipping void has been left after UFS withdrew its weekly service between Turkey and Malta and this also happened at the time of the privatisation of the Freeport.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com