Italian port city of Palermo is aiming to attract Chinese investments to increase its capacity and become the gateway for Chinese companies to European markets .

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping was on a visit to Italy from Thursday to Saturday, where he visited Sicily and met with his Italian counterpart in the regional capital Palermo. His visit came hours after China and Italy signed a historic agreement to mark Italy's entry to the Belt and Road Initiative, an agreement which put Italy in the spotlight. 

 

The port of Palermo currently operates with a capacity to handle 10,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) . Officials in Palermo believe that a much larger and more efficient port will increase the capacity to reach a level of 16 million TEUs. 

 

Alessandro Albanese, the president of Palermo's Chamber of Commerce, discussed Palermo’s strategic location. 

 

"The Mediterranean represents 0.6 percent of the seas around the world but in reality 20 percent of sea traffic from around the world passes from the Mediterranean. An important consideration is that this strategic position concerns not only European countries but also African countries that will represent the new economic mine for the next 50 years," he said.

 

The new port in Palermo need approximately 5 billion euros of investment. The new project includes a hotel, residence, office space as well as beach facilities. 

 

Representatives of the Sicily Foundation are upbeat that they can implement an action plan in a timely manner. 

 

"The construction of a hub port has an important first moment related to time and bureaucracy, to obtain the necessary authorizations for a hub port, something that cannot be achieved without the intervention of numerous institutions involved in authorizations. The estimations made for our project, starting from the moment in which all the authorizations will be obtained, is a period of three years," said Raffaele Bonsignore, president of the foundation. 

 

More than half of trade between Europe and China goes through sea routes, therefore a Mediterranean port hub would create a lot of business potential. 

 

During Xi’s visit in Palermo, Chinese and Italian officials also signed agreements related to agriculture and expressed their eagerness to increase cooperation in investments and tourism. 

 

Source:cctvplus

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