Ashdod & Haifa Port CEOs: seriously consider privatization

The call was made by a number of speakers at the Shippers Council annual conference which dealt exclusively in Israel's poor ports performance
 
Israel Shippers Council leaders as well as leading exporters and importers and freight forwarders called last week for the immediate implementation of the ports' privatization plan in order to solve the ports' low service quality.
 
The call was made by a number of speakers at the Shippers Council annual conference which dealt exclusively in Israel's poor ports performance.
 
Ashdod Port Co. CEO, Mr. Shuky Sagis, called on the government to begin privatizing the ports. Sagis noted that "Instead of reforming port tariffs, the time has come to seriously consider privatization. On one hand, the government says that it doesn’t want to supervise and manage the ports, but that's precisely what it does in practice. It's necessary to think how to expedite privatization," Sagis said.
 
Mr. Amos Uzani, Haifa Port Co. CEO, questioned the effectiveness in trying to apply new port tariff and suggested that the government would be better off by going ahead with privatization rather than dealing with the application of new port tariff structure.Uzani added that the privatization process will solve not only the port tariff structure but also labor relations which seriously affect the ports service quality.
 
Ministry of Transport director general, Mr. Gideon Sitterman, said, "Privatizing a monopoly without dealing with the rules of the game is problematic."