For the first time since its entry into the entity became official, in December 2019, the commune of Los Andes and the Los Andes Terrestrial Port (PTLA) hosted an official session of the National Association of Port Cities.*100002 *
The entity, which brings together the municipalities of port cities, such as Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Coquimbo, Valparaíso, San Antonio, Talcahuano, Puerto Montt, Aysén and Punta Arenas, incorporated Los Andes as the first commune that has a land logistics enclave, a situation that from other cities in the country was cause for interest.
In this way, headed by its president, the mayor of Iquique Mauricio Soria, for the first time the entity brought together several of its members, including representatives of the municipalities of San Antonio and Valparaíso, in an appointment that also included a operational visit to the PTLA to learn how its logistics operate.
“A country like Chile moves 90% of its exports and imports through the sea, but it also has a relationship with its neighboring countries, and that is the importance of why we are here: to be able to know this reality that hopefully we could have in our cities, that’s why we came to meet her. The mayor invited us and we are leaving with a task that is to be able to replicate something similar”, highlighted the community chief of Iquique, who presided over the visit.
While the mayor of Los Andes, Manuel Rivera, pointed out that “more than talking about ports, (we must) talk about the logistics that this country requires (…) We are very happy, grateful to the president of the Association and mayor of Iquique, who held sessions in our city and was able to come to see on the ground the politics and successful experience that has happened here in the PTLA, but above all to validate us as a land port”.
For his part, from the Puerto Terrestre Los Andes Concession Company, a subsidiary of the Azvi Group and responsible for the operation of the Andean enclave, its general manager, Ricardo Ghiorzi, valued the fact of “being able to show the mayors the reality of our port terrestrial, what the development has been these years, the experience it has had and what can be replicated in other facilities. We are very happy with this visit”.
Finally, the mayoress of San Antonio, Constanza Lizana, affirmed that “it is important to understand the system of ports that exists, be they maritime and land, and that we can attend to an institutionality that allows the development of the territories in conjunction with the port activity”.
The organization, which recently made a public call to continue advancing in the improvement of a National Port Policy, seeks to collaborate in solving common problems in the relationship between ports and the cities that host them, promoting greater development economic, social and cultural of the inhabitants of said communes, based on the resources that the logistics activity can generate.
In the case of Los Andes, its most recent member and the only non-coastal commune to belong to the entity, is home to the Los Andes Terrestrial Port, an enclave that in the last year served 193 thousand trucks and served 4.2 million tons of export and import cargo from Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia.