Poor infrastructure, less cruise ship calls, Odessa port official says
Cruise ships do not want to visit Odessa due to the city poor infrastructure, particularly the airport, said Nikolai Pavliuk, the head of SE Odessa Commercial Sea Port.
"We could handle at least 10 times more ships, just as much as the ports of Naples and Barcelona do. Even Istanbul expects arrivals of 400 vessels. It means 320 cruise liners just did not want to come to us", the port’s press service quoted Nikolai Pavliuk as saying.
"In the last decade, OCSP has invested nearly $ 100 million in infrastructure development of cruise business. This year, OCSP expects to receive 92,000 passengers on 80 cruise ships,” he said.
"The passengers on average spend in the city some EUR 150 a day, and the ships crew members – about EUR 50. Given the expected arrivals, we could get tens of millions of euros in cash," said Yuri Vaskov, the first deputy to the OCSP’s head.
State-owned Odessa Commercial Sea Port is a largest port of the Black Sea-Azov basin. The port encompasses 14 ha, 9-km waterfront and 54 berths to accommodate 13meter draft vessels. Port of Odessa enables trade flow in the amount of over 14m tons of dry cargo and 14m tons of petroleum products a year. In 2010, cargo throughput of OCSP shrank by 11.8% year-over-year to 24,7 million tons and container traffic totaled 351,600 TEUs.