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Barranquilla, its authorities and production sectors celebrated with joy and extraordinary news the record high cargo volumes in the city’s port area. The report for May was 1,299,738 tons, the highest figure in the history of the so-called Golden Gate of Colombia.
This is extraordinary news, since for a capital city that has been promoted to the category of Special Industrial and Port Zone, the permanent low draft and the resulting habitual need to lighten cargoes or reroute ships through sediments hamper normal transport. Ships can disembark at the port on the 22 km channel from Bocas de Ceniza to the Pumarejo Bridge.
In fact, in these editorials the attention of the Comagdalena and the governments is called again and again to allocate investments to guarantee the draft in an area so important for the national port activity and to realize the possibility of its own dredging work and avoid the trauma caused by each contract for dredging work, considering that dredging work is done by the volume of sediment removed and not by services.
After the failure of the PPP, the Duque government proposed Plan B, which is ongoing today, with the advance planning of the dredging contract, which also has a longer duration of six months, without resorting to the obvious urgency of hiring occupations, becoming a solution for daily bread and extinguishing fires, as the catastrophic air currents often paralyze the port area of Barranquilla.
The continuity of this dredging and the technical support of the Atlantic Capital Union and the Port Authority are key to maintaining today the passage through the Magdalena River at a draft of more than 10 meters. But the climatic conditions caused by El Niño also have something to do with it.
In any case, the cargo traffic in the Port of Barranquilla is hitting record highs, which is good news because if this trend continues, the cumulative traffic for the whole year ending in May will reach 5,690,144 tons, an increase of 9% over the same period last year. By the end of 2023-2024, the cargo throughput of the city’s ports could reach 13 million tons.
According to Asoportuaria analysis, the number of ships has remained the same, but now they can carry more goods in and out, so there are direct flights from Brazil, Argentina and the United States, which means that exports have increased by 17% and imports have increased by 17%. This is an increase of 10%. This is despite the fact that the overall indicators of the country’s economy have been lagging behind. In the case of Barranquilla, there has been an increase in containers, bulk, coke and liquid cargo, but there has been no significant change in steel.
The design of its permanent dredger is ready, but now Comagdalena is looking for tender sources to carry out the construction. The estimated value of the vessel, built in conjunction with Cotecmar, is $365 billion.
I hope that the management of Cormagdalena will be able to achieve results in this sense and that the freeze and budget cuts announced by the Ministry of Finance will not ultimately affect this aspiration that the city and its port department have worked so hard to promote. In March, when the minutes for the commencement of the dredging contract were signed until September, it was announced that the construction of Barranquilla’s own dredger would start in the second half of this year; however, in a recent visit by the director of Cormagdalena, he reported that the design is ready, but the challenge now is to obtain the resources and that it is on the right track.
Barranquilla needs this situation because of the imminent arrival of “La Niña”, a phenomenon that could change the hydraulic conditions of the Magdalena River and increase sedimentation. At least the dredging work will continue until September, with funding guaranteed to continue maintenance until July 2026.
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