The Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife A total of 25 million euros stopped entering in 2021 for subsidizing inter-island traffic by 70% of the rate for passengers and 80% of the rate for ships and merchandise; that is, apply said discount percentages to the tax for using the Tenerife port facilities in said traffic. The application of these bonuses to the rates of use of inter-island traffic is included in the Consolidated Text of the Law of State Ports and the Merchant Marine as a measure of general interest associated with the «need to promote the cohesion of the island territories that make up an archipelago and avoid the effects that the additional costs of double insularity have on the economic development and competitiveness of the smaller islands».
In this regard, it should be remembered that ports are entities that are self-financing, that is, they execute their projects and investments based on their own economic income obtained from the fees paid by port operators, without receiving transfers from the General State Budget. nor of the Budget of the Autonomous Community. There is no doubt that this bonus introduced in the Consolidated Text of the Law on State Ports and the Merchant Navy allowed the economy of this province to save a total of 25 million euros per year in 2021 by paying port fees , thus contributing to the cohesion of the canaries.
However, for Puertos de Tenerife these are services that are provided and for which a very small amount (20 or 30%) is received, which does not occur in other peninsular port authorities, which makes it difficult to develop initiatives with the to lower taxes on other activities such as freight traffic. Such is the magnitude of this loss of income in the coffers of the Tenerife Port Authority that, if it had had them, it would not have had to go into debt to build the Port of Granadilla, a facility in which Puertos de Tenerife has invested some 260 million euros since 2010, of which 160 million have been financed through bank loans.
Average of 30 million in ten years.
The global figure of 25 million euros not received in 2021 (the year affected by the pandemic) rises to 30 if the average annual discounts that Puertos de Tenerife have been obliged to apply in the last twelve years are calculated, in the concepts of inter-insularity and remoteness. In some annuities such as 2017, he stopped entering up to 36 million euros.
Interport Compensation Fund (FCI).
The Consolidated Text of the Law on State Ports and the Merchant Navy, understanding the problem that the decrease in income from discounts for inter-island traffic can pose for island ports, contemplates in its articles a mechanism to compensate for the amount not paid in . It is the Interport Compensation Fund, managed by Puertos del Estado and made up of contributions from all the Spanish port authorities, the tool with which to restitute part of the amounts not paid in by inter-island traffic rebates. From this Fund only ports whose profitability is below 2.5% receive compensation, a situation in which the Tenerife Port Authority finds itself.
The Fund usually returns to our port only a third of what is not paid in by inter-island traffic discounts, in this case 8 of the 25 million euros already mentioned, being by far the Spanish Port Authority that receives the most from the Fund as it is also the which pays the most for the large number of passengers passing through our ports. Not in vain, in 2021 Puertos de Tenerife occupied, in the national ranking, the second position in passenger traffic with 4.6 million (25% of the national total) and the first in passenger vehicle traffic with 1, 50 million (36.5% of the national total).
The set of passenger and vehicle traffic in the passenger regime that transits through the Ports of Tenerife is of such magnitude, that for this concept, 19 of the 25 million mentioned in discounts were no longer entered, corresponding to the 6 million remaining euros to the inter-island traffic of ships and goods
In net terms, with the aforementioned refund of 8 million euros that Puertos de Tenerife receives from the FCI, it lost 18 million euros in 2021, which represents 36% of all the resources generated in 2021 by the Port Authority of Santa Tenerife Cross. This continues to be a notable decrease in Tenerife’s economic resources and therefore in provincial port investment.
It can be deduced from the foregoing that for the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, having a large number of passengers and vehicles in the passenger regime becomes a major management problem, as it has to provide a service with all the guarantees, and receiving only 30% of what a Peninsular Port Authority with the same traffic would receive for the same concept.
It seems logical, therefore, that the services to inter-island passenger traffic should have in the Canary Islands a consideration similar to that of the rest of the peninsular port systemwithout bonuses and without depending on compensation from the FCI, which in turn depends on the profitability of the Port Authority not exceeding 2.50%.
Thus, the contribution to the territorial cohesion of the Canary Islands without taxing the costs of dual insularity should be a matter of general interest and be assumed by the General State Budgets. This would make it possible to increase the competitiveness of the Canarian ports in our immediate environment, while these extra incomes would enable us to reduce the tax burden on general merchandise traffic, which should be our great objective in promoting the import and export of products in our land and thus lower their final prices. It would also be an additional contribution to the cohesion of the Canary Islands and to avoid the additional costs of being a double insularity.
