Cuba works to improve freight transportation

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 4 (ACN) Cuba is carrying out a group of actions aimed at improving the reception, transfer and storage of goods, raw materials, food and other items, including the improvement of the port-transport-internal economy chain, and also to counteract the effects of the blockade on these operations or services.

In a press conference in Havana, Pablo H. Cuellar Gonzalez, director of Freight at the Ministry of Transport (Mitrans), mentioned among the measures the acquisition of rail cars, lengthening the distances of trains in traffic, and the recovery of refrigerators and warehouses, especially in port facilities.
He recalled that the completion in late 2018 or early 2019 of the multipurpose terminal in Santiago de Cuba will help improve operations in the eastern region.
He also stressed that container terminals such as the one in the Special Zone for Maritime Development are working on the reduction, by electronic means, of procedures or delays in the collection of these means, and there is substantial progress in this regard.
The improvement of the management structures of the port-transport-internal economy chain is another of the actions undertaken, in addition to the planning or organization of ship arrivals in Cuba and the remaining operations in order to eliminate demurrage payments and speed up the collection of goods by the corresponding entities.
United to the above is the generalization in a greater number of means, especially automotive, of the fleet management and control system, the so-called GPS, with a view to a rational and efficient use of fuel and equipment themselves, to avoid indisciplines on the road and crimes, said Arturo Diaz Pacheco, senior specialist in this activity in the Mitrans.
Cuellar Gonzalez said that at the end of this year the balance of cargo transported at the country level is expected to meet only 90.4 percent, and among the Higher Organizations of Business Management served by the Mitrans the Union of Railways today has the greatest impact.
He added that although the results are to be computed until September, in the first semester the behavior of the plans was not very favorable due to the low availability of locomotives and other means and non-compliance in key branches of the economy.
He explained that although sometimes the containers were not on time in the planned places, caused by changes in the production schemes of certain industries, the main incidence was the non-transportation of one million 600 thousand tons of sugar cane, 566 thousand tons of its derivatives, and 36 thousand tons of food.
The delays in the harvest in a group of sugar mills, due to intense rains and other factors, and non-compliance with the volumes of sugar to be produced, will affect the balance of the load to be moved by train in 2018, said the director.
He pointed out as a specific problem, in which local governments seek solutions, the delay in the rotation of the containers in the loading and unloading centers, as happens with fertilizers, so the port-transport-internal economy chain is not yet at the necessary level of efficiency.