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Staff Reporter

PALMA
THE Balearic Ports department, which is part of the Balearic Ministry for Public Works, Housing and Transport, is proceeding with the renewal of 11 concessions for leisure ports and yacht clubs.

This is within the framework of adapting the concession to the Balearic Ports Law, which was approved in July 2005.
This law offered the 28 leisure port concession holders the possibility of obtaining a new concession contract for a period of 30 years, on condition that they adapted their infrastructures and basic services to the minimums established by this law, and their rents were brought up to date as, in many cases, these have not been revised since the inception of their contract.

The companies had the opportunity to avail themselves of this arrangement offered by the Ports Law, or to keep the contract they had, taking into account that the State Coastal Law of 1988 restricted the length of concession contracts to a maximum of 30 years, so the current contracts will expire in 2018.

To conform to the Balearic Ports Law and secure a new contract it is necessary to get a technical report for the adaption to the law, while the updating of the rents is done using a property valuation done by Government experts.

The new rents actually correspond to five percent of this valuation, which takes into account the land, installations, and area of water the port has.
The leisure ports which have opted for this route and which have already got their new contracts are: Club de Vela in Andratx, Sant Antoni de Portmany (Ibiza), Ciutadella, Adaia, Porto Petro, Porto Cristo, Porto Colom, Son Serra de Marina, Portals Vells, Cala Rajada, and Cala Fornells.

All the leisure ports on the islands have applied for this offer by the Balearic Law, with the exception of the yacht clubs in Colonia de Sant Pere and Cala en Bosch.

The Balearic Ports department has dealt first with those concessions which are due to expire the soonest.
One of the cases which has generated a lot of controversy is the concession for Portals. Here the port users formed an association and asked the Balearic Ports department to mediate with the concessionary company (which has applied for the adaptation to the new law but has still not got the new contract). They want to have “priority” when the new user contracts are being given out, as they now have rights which will disappear with the new concessionary contract. The department told them it could not interfere as this was a private matter between them and the concessionary company.