The renaming of port authorities has not been invented due to the current crisis, the numerical parameters of which are presented in the Independent July 14 publication “Half of the cargo has disappeared in half a year”. It was written in the declaration of the government of Krisjānis Kariņš and during its roots goes much further – for decades through good and bad times. However, since the early 1990s, ports have never been as bad as they are now, when times are judged simply by the amount of cargo handled in ports, ie by the remainder of what was once. It is now worse than in 2002, when Russia closed the crude oil pipeline to Ventspils, which reduced cargo turnover at the port by 15 million tons per year. Cargo reduction now applies to all ports and to almost all types of cargo; now the state company “Latvijas dzelzceļš” has received a huge blow. As if the state should react to it at least in such a way that the situation would be discussed at the meeting of the Latvian Ports, Transit and Logistics Council (Ports Council), which took place in remote mode yesterday, July 15, after many months. Anyone interested could listen to the conversations of the participants of the meeting.
A credible reservation would be that not all rescue measures in the transit sector are publicly negotiable. However, it was also wrong not to mention the situation in the sector at all at the meeting of the Ports Council.
It was so wrong that, as far as can be judged by the intonations of the voice, its nominal leader K. Kariņš was ashamed of what was happening at the council meeting.
As soon as Uldis Pīlēns said from Liepāja that in the ports “it is a matter of survival, not administration”, K. Kariņš immediately remembered other works and disconnected from the continuation of the sitting. The then Minister of Transport Tālis Linkaits, who took over his duties, continued to chair the meeting in a demonstratively light tone and did not lead to the conclusion that the Port Council meeting then decides regarding the draft law on renaming port authorities. K. Kariņš had left a legacy of choosing whether the council “supports” or “takes note” of the proposals, but T. Linkaits closed the meeting with sincere thanks to all participants for their participation. However, if a decision is recorded in the minutes of the meeting, then the participants of the meeting will only find out that they have decided at the meeting something that did not actually happen.
One can now think differently whether the highest officials of Latvia cannot keep transit cargo in Latvia because they are engaged in nonsense, or are engaged in nonsense because they cannot keep transit cargo. In the present case, Mr Linkaits noticed, on the one hand, that he did not give an obvious reason to blame his hosts from the New Conservative Party (JKP) for not fulfilling the task for which he had become a minister at all, but, on the other hand, for not doing much. It could also be the case that, even in the current circumstances, the JPP no longer seeks to rename port authorities, but at least does not openly deviate from its idea. Perhaps the party hopes to exchange such a resignation for some other concession from the coalition partners.
Thanks also to U. Pīlēns for testifying that the first fighter for port authorities as state capital companies was Andris Šķēle as Prime Minister around 1996, when port authorities had not yet been named as public derivatives. At that time, A. Šķēle quite rightly predicted that fantastically large money would flow into Latvia through ports. Various politicians and their groupings have from time to time figured that it would be more convenient for them to access this money through corporations, while competing groups have protected the current management of ports with greater influence over municipalities. At the end of last year, JKP implemented another method of getting rid of Riga and Ventspils municipalities in the port authorities of the respective cities without renaming them as capital companies.
It now turns out that the ports will inevitably become state-owned companies in the sense that they will exist at the expense of state capital, just as airBaltic does.
In that case, the formal change of the names or status of the port authorities may no longer be relevant, but it is not solid to openly renounce the words in the government declaration.
The meeting of the Ports Council took place one day after the meeting of the government, at which Latvijas dzelzceļš was launched along the airbaltic trail to the Treasury. The government decided to invest 32.4 million euros in the company’s share capital, 13 million euros for the maintenance of tracks that do not have enough money from the remaining freight, and another 14 million euros for the repair of tracks that have been worn out by another state-owned passenger train. . Prior to that, the government had accepted a request from the Ventspils Freeport Authority to lend it EUR 15.3 million to complete the infrastructure improvement works already under way.
If the ports continue to exist, then a lot of money will change there in Latvia, but it is still a big difference whether the money flows in or out of Latvia through the ports. The current plans for the reorganization of port administrations were written in the hope of money that will flow into Latvia. Right now, the situation is reversing and the political groups need to rethink their plans.
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