October 5 (SeeNews) - Romania's Tulcea county council said that it has secured EU funding in the amount of 17.5 million euro ($20.5 million) for a project for modernization of the Black Sea port of Sulina.
The project will benefit from EU funding through the Danube Delta Integrated Territorial Investment Mechanism within the Large Infrastructure Operational Programme, the county council said in a press release on Friday.
"The investment will completely change Sulina, and will allow to increase the volume of goods processed annually at the port and will stimulate interest in further investments," Tulcea county council Horia Teodorescu said.
According to Teodorescu, the port's current infrastructure has major flaws that create risks and difficulties during docking maneuvers as well as during loading and unloading operations.
"The project aims to rehabilitate the entire infrastructure of the port which has a free zone status. We have a 150-metre opening to the Danube, which is currently in a particularly bad shape and will be rehabilitated. The platform is also in a deplorable state, and through the project we want to reach an accepted load of about 5 tonnes per sq m," the general manager of Sulina Free Zone Dragos Ionita said.
The port of Sulina is situated close to Romania's border with Ukraine. The port has a quay length of 5,940 m and depths of between 2.5 m and 7.5 m.
($=0.8529 euro)