Almost a dozen officials from the Port of Buenos Aires completed an UNCTAD management programme in December 2017 as part of an overall strategy to boost competitiveness.
Eleven mid-level managers working in the Port of Buenos Aires graduated last month from a two-year UNCTAD port management programme, marking a successful end to the first cycle of training in Argentina.
During a ceremony on 6 December, Gonzalo Mórtola, head of the country's port authority (Interventor de la Administración General de Puertos), awarded United Nations certificates to managers working in different areas of the port including terminal operations, customs, human resources, legal affairs, and security and environment.
"One of the great things about this programme is how it brings together workers from all areas of operations," the port authority's chief of staff Mariano Saúl said. “Each participant learns more not only about how the different parts of the port work but also about the challenges their colleagues face."
"The result has been a stronger sense of community in the Port of Buenos Aires," he said.
To earn the certificate, each participant had to complete a 240-hour course on port management and then conduct research on a challenge the port faced, devising a strategy for improvement. They presented their final reports to panels of senior port managers and UNCTAD officials.
The report that scored the highest mark looked at why the port had lost a quarter of its transshipment traffic – containers shipped through Buenos Aires to or from smaller ports in the region – during the past decade and how it could win back some of the lost customers.
The author, Sebastián Garcia, determined that the drop in traffic coincided with a change in customs procedures that had made the clearance of transshipment containers slower and more costly.
"The stricter clearance procedures were put in place to make sure goods in transshipment containers were not being 'illegally' unloaded in Argentina. But they had also made Buenos Aires less attractive to Paraguayan exporters and importers, who were instead sending or bringing their goods through Montevideo," Mr. Garcia said, referring to neighboring Uruguay's main port, located on the other side of the Rio de la Plata river, which divides the two countries.
For Mr. Saúl, the programme's "high added value" lies in the quality of the participants' final reports.
"These reports show that the graduates have already been able to take what they've learned in the classroom and use it to improve port operations," he said.
The Port of Buenos Aires decided to join the programme in 2016 as part of its overall strategy to improve competitiveness – container traffic had slipped 12% from 1.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2006 to 1.4 million in 2015.
A better managed port will benefit the millions of businesses and consumers who rely on Buenos Aires to trade with the rest of the world. More than 85% of the country's container traffic is loaded and unloaded in the Argentine capital.
"A more efficient port means more competitive exports and less expensive imports. In the case of Buenos Aires, this is true not just for people living in Argentina, but also for their landlocked neighbors in Paraguay and Bolivia," said Gonzalo Ayala, the UNCTAD official who manages the programme's activities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Started in 1996 in ports in Benin, Gabon and Senegal, the TrainForTrade Port Management Programme has since expanded to more than 200 ports in 34 African, Asian and Latin American nations, training more than 3,000 officials worldwide.
In the Latin American and Caribbean region, the programme is active in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Peru, in addition to newcomer Argentina.
UNCTAD works closely with Irish, French and Spanish ports, whose senior managers give their time and expertise as course instructors and mentors. Some of the European ports also provide funding.
The support provided by the Spanish ports of Gijón and Valencia was key in the success of the first training cycle in Buenos Aires.
Helping developing countries improve their ports' performance is a priority for UNCTAD, whose call of duty is to help such nations better integrate the global economy.
Because more than 80% of goods traded globally leave and enter countries by boat, the health of a nation's economy depends greatly on the efficiency of its ports.
