The new terminal is set to quadruple the port of Moín’s current capacity. It will be the largest of its kind in Central America, designed to receive so-called Post Panamax ships — cargo vessels that are too big to fit through the existing Panama Canal.
A solid majority of Limón residents say that a $1 billion APM Terminals port project will be a positive thing for the impoverished region, according to a survey from Borges y Asociados. The poll results came out soon before the government announced it would restart negotiations with striking dockworkers on Thursday morning.
A Tico Times reporter takes a stroll down Limón's main boulevard and asks local residents what they think about a proposed $1 billion Moín Port expansion project at the center of the ongoing controversy.
Both President Luis Guillermo Solís' administration and the Atlantic Port Authority union, SINTRAJAP, dug in their heels after negotiations at Casa Presidencial ended in an impasse Thursday.
Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa announced that police had removed striking stevedores from the docks in Moín and Limón, which handle 80 percent of Costa Rica’s international trade, Wednesday evening with the support of Casa Presidencial.
The Supreme Court’s Civil and Administrative Law Branch recently rejected the final pending appeal against a port renovation and expansion project by APM Terminal, a Maersk subsidiary based in the Netherlands. The lawsuit attempted to block the $1 billion project on the country's Caribbean coast by claiming that APM's exclusive 33-year concession to operate the container terminal is an illegal monopoly.
