Raz: Bratislava to Have One of Most Modern and Biggest Harbours on the Danube

Bratislava, October 2 (TASR) - After its modernisation, the Bratislava harbour will become one of the most modern harbours on the Danube River, but the modernisation must be preceded by the settling of property issues with a privately-owned company called 'Slovenska Plavba a Pristavy' (Slovak Shipping and Harbours) first, Transport Minister Jozef Raz Jr. (Smer-SD nominee) declared on Wednesday. "We've got really big plans for this. We hope that after the property issues are settled, we'll manage to acquire resources from Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and hence build a large and modern harbour here. It will be one of the top state-of-the-art and biggest harbours on the Danube. This harbour won't have any local competition to write home about, plus it will become special due to its close proximity to the airport and direct railway connection," said Raz. Raz explained that in the past Slovenska Plavba a Pristavy had acquired the entire harbour infrastructure through privatisation and the company rents all the land from state-owned Verejne Pristavy (Public Harbours). "Seeing as the privately-owned company has never owned the land plots and, contrariwise, the state company has never owned the infrastructure, neither of them has invested anything into modernisation," stated Raz, adding that under such state of affairs the ministry turned down the request to renew the rental contract. The minister pointed out that the new harbour will provide a highly ecological mode of transport and the Bratislava harbour could play an enormous role in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. "We've got the Danube here, we've got such an enormous harbour that essentially has no competition and which has been blocked by the existence of the privately-owned company. This means that it'd be a shame not to use this and make something out of it, so that just like Komarno, also Bratislava can start benefiting from a large intermodal harbour on its land," added Raz. mf/mcs