(dr) APDL
Port of Leixões
This Saturday the first containers begin to leave Leixões and Lisbon. The priority is to resume supply to Madeira and the Azores.
A crisis installed itself in maritime transport of goods in Portugal, this week.
O new computer system – Integrated System of Means of Transport and Goods – is the majority of customs in Portugal. There are containers held in ports.
There is declarative errors, adaptation; there is technical failures that slow down processes. The Government of Madeira, a region with obvious supply shortages on the eve of New Year’s Eve, described the situation in the Port of Leixões as “unbelievable” and warned that Madeira is going through a “very serious and unacceptable situation that has never been experienced”.
The Tax and Customs Authority, responsible for the Integrated System of Means of Transport and Goods, has already activated a Contingency plan to try to resolve the situation.
According to , the first containers should begin to to go out of the ports of Lisboa and of Leixões already today, Saturday; ea priority is to resume the supply of Madeira e Azores and send perishable products.
Customs workers in Leixões and Lisbon did not follow the time tolerance: they went to work this Friday, because of this situation.
But António Nabo Martins, president of the Association of Freight Forwarders of Portugal, warns that Solving problems manually is “much more complicated than automation”.
Therefore, he reinforces, “if things are not resolved from an IT point of view, the tendency is to accumulate a lot of load again”.
