New Ulsan Port project in the rough

The government's New Ulsan Port project is looking at some rough going in the wake of delayed budget transfers and a lack of private investors.

Ulsan Regional Maritime Affairs and Fisheries said April 20 that in 1995 the government promised to build 31 berths and 2 breakwaters by 2011 with 2.9 trillion won (1.49 trillion won from the government and 1.4 trillion won from private investors) in order to make Ulsan a hub port for Southeastern Korea.

Samsung Corp. took over the first stage of the government project to build a 2.45 Km breakwaters at a cost to the government of 707 billion won. Private capital was scheduled to build 20 berths by 2006 capable of docking 20 vessels anywhere up to 30,000 tons.

However, breakwater construction is slowing progress to a snail's pace, supplied with 100 billion won from the government, less than half the 232.7 billion scheduled for the project.

Worse yet, private investment, which was to constitute about half of the port project's budget, is in doubt due to a lack of applicants.

A concerned Ulsan Regional Maritime Affairs and Fisheries official said that the fate of the New Port Project would be determined by the acquisition of state funding and private investors. They had hoped for many more private investors to be aggressively involved in New Port Project, he added. However, the current outlook is grim because of slow-downs in the domestic economy.