Porto Novo, Cape Verde, 21 Jun – The next major investment planned for Cape Verde’s Santo Antao Island will be the airport, whose studies have already been completed, Cape Verdean Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves said last Thursday, cited by the Inforpress news agency.

Neves was speaking during the ceremony to launch the first stage of work to expand and modernise the port of Porto Novo. The new airport will help Santo Antao Island win the “battle for development”, he said.

The Minister of State and for Infrastructures, Transport and Telecommunications, Manuel Inocencio Sousa, announced in turn that within two years Cape Verde would have a new and modern fleet of roll-on/roll-off ships formed by various vessels which would change the situation of inter-island maritime transport.

The government is now investing about 300 million euros to modernise all of Cape Verde’s ports and that investment is considered “an essential element” for the country’s development, Inocencio Sousa said.

The project to expand and provide infrastructures for the Porto Novo port, which should be ready in October 2011, is meant to meet social and economic development needs for this region by improving the quality of maritime cargo and passenger transport.

Official figures indicate that the project will install an operational capacity able to meet increasing port traffic for the next 20 years, enabling fast, efficient and safe port operations. (macauhub)