On 8 February in Odessa representatives of Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine (MIU), its reforms support office (RST), management of Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority (USPA) and state enterprise (SE) Sea Trade Port Yuzhny discussed development of a concept note for the public stevedore’s concession project with the port’s workers and trade unions.
As reports USPA, the draft note had been developed by RST.
The document is based on recommendations of the company Egis International and it also considers positive experience of Olvia and Kherson public stevedores concession preparation.
The meeting was noted to discuss questions and suggestions to the document to be taken into account at the session of the working group on the Yuzhny Port public stevedore concession preparation.
As per Head of RST office under MIU Iryna Koshel, upon the approval of Concept Note a Feasibility Study (FS) would start to develop in order to make base for the tender.
RST assures that the SE STP Yuzhny concession FS development will consider the labour force interests not less than economic matters, as well as it was with the pilot projects in ports Olvia and Kherson.
“MIU warrants that the concession project conditions will contain clauses securing protection of working collectives and making impossible any compulsory staff reduction by would-be concessionaires inasmuch as a concession project should be favouring both the state and the concessionaire, and the society”, stressed RST.
Reportedly the solution of issues concerned with the enterprise’s staff number in the course of the concession project would be directly participated by MIU, Odessa Region State Administration, State Employment Agency, management of SE STP Yuzhny and Yuzhny Branch of USPA, as well as trade union committees of the enterprise and Yuzhny municipality delegates.
“The draft Concept Note considers four scenarios of the port’s development featuring a concessionaire. Working out in detail every aspect: commercial, legal, environmental, and social as a most important, will be performed as soon as the FS development”, indicated USPA’s CEO Raivis Veckagans. He has also accentuated that the procedure is going to be similar to those concession projects of Olvia and Kherson developed by Consortium of international consultants (EY, Castalia, MTBS Ukraine, etc.) formed by EBRD and World Bank, which have already withstood consideration attended by the public stevedoring companies’ labour force, and local authorities too.
Let’s remind that national transport strategy till 2030, as adopted by Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in 2018, anticipates the state gradually abandoning the stevedoring activities through the public-private partnership (PPP) instruments including concession. USPA as commonly known is launching the concession tenders on Olvia and Kherson this May.
https://cfts.org.ua/news/2019/02/08/vopros_kontsessii_gp_mtpyu_obsudili_s_kollektivom_predpriyatiya_51615