They want transparency and
efficiency, writes Alan Peat
PORT PRIVATISATION will be sooner rather than later.
That's the impression gained by Tony Norton of Garlicke & Bousefield, legal adviser to the Association of Shipping Lines (ASL) - from a recent meeting in Durban between the lines, the Department of Public Enterprises, and its newly-appointed US consultant on privatisation, John Arnold.
The meeting, said Norton, was a positive indication that the department is quite serious about privatisation - and moving forward fast in this direction.
My feeling was that there is now a will in the department, and that things will happen in the relatively near future.
Arnold is currently advising the Department of Public Enterprises on the restructuring of South African ports, and the meeting was designed to allow the lines to air their views to him.
The lines presented their own case on the ports and privatisation, said Norton. The bottom line, as far as they are concerned, is that they support privatisation on the basis that the process is conducted transparently with no loss of efficiency in the ports.
Arnold's consultancy brief from the government is for roughly a three-month tenure and the lines are expecting his recommendations to be made to the Department of Public Enterprises soon after that.
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