The Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Competition will move forward with the complaint you filed Montecon against National Administration of Ports (ANP)regarding the refusal to operate containers in the Port of Montevideo.
The service company of the Port of Montevideo, Montecon, denounced the ANP before the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) After months of claiming for events that affect “the free competition and harm foreign trade”, according to a statement published by the company, which highlights that the administration has denied it the possibility of handling container ships.
This complaint was filed on March 13, and now the Defense of Competition has given rise to it and will move forward with the investigation. Within a period of 15 days, it will notify the port authority.
What is Montecon upholding?
According to the complaint, which has more than 20 pages, the ANP “makes operational decisions that hinder or prevent users from using public docks and that do not allow operators to provide the required services”.
To argue the relevance of the claim, Montecon resorted to other complaints filed and resolutions in which the Commission claimed to have competence to analyze anti-competitive acts and conduct carried out in the port services market; as well as a resolution of last December in which it maintained “that it has been the position of the Commission that the port services market is subject to the free competition regulations”.
Regarding the new facts to be investigated, the port company points out, on the one hand, that on February 27 of this year, the request for berthing of a company ship was blocked Ipanema Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) on public docks, even despite having complied with the corresponding notices. At the time, Montecon had indicated that “this prevented the line from complying with its planned itinerary for national foreign trade and that the cargo that could not be operated in Montevideo was unloaded in Buenos Aires”.
A similar situation occurred with the vessels of the service Far East, one of the main ones that Montecon serves in public docks in terms of volume and regularity, where on several occasions the decisions of the ANP were detrimental to operations.
In this sense, the text of the complaint states that on each of the aforementioned occasions, Montecon informed the ANP sufficiently in advance of the eventual damages and delays caused by the lack of berthing. For this reason, the company requests that the methods used in the dock reservation system be investigated and the reasons why public docks are not assigned when the shipowners so request.
Likewise, it stresses that any decision that prevents or hinders Montecon and other operators from providing container loading and unloading services will necessarily be flawed in the end, for deviate from the purpose legally imposed on the authority, avoiding the formation of de facto monopolies and ensuring the freedom of choice for consumers. For this reason, the ANP must be ordered to immediately cease its anti-competitive behavior by correcting the organization of berths in the Port of Montevideo, so that Montecon can compete under minimum conditions to provide services to shipping lines and the country’s foreign trade.
Source: Ambito
