The Finger Pier is a 1.25-hectare port facility with a berth area of 250 meters and can accommodate two small/medium vessels or one large vessel.

Officials from OPASCOR and CPA led by OPASCOR chairman and CEO Tomas Riveral (fourth from left) and CPA general manager Leonilo Miole cut the ribbon of the Finger Pier at Cebu International Port.

Oriental Port and Allied Services Corporation (OPASCOR) and the Cebu Ports Authority (CPA) on Monday inaugurated the P1.2 billion Finger Pier project at the Cebu International Port undertaken as a public private partnership (PPP) program to decongest the CIP.

OPASCOR Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tomas Riveral said the port project can accommodate general cargo vessels carrying rice, steel, cement, salt and other bulk cargo bound for Cebu.

“Presently, the CIP has only two berthing spaces and with this newly inaugurated Finger Pier, there will be two additional berthing spaces that would help decongest cargo traffic,” he said.

With the new Finger Pier, new docking areas for international cargo vessels carrying 900 twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) containers can be accommodated.

The Finger Pier is a 1.25-hectare port facility with a berth area of 250 meters and can accommodate two small/medium vessels or one large vessel.

It has a yard space of 7,500 square meters capable of stacking an additional load of 1,050 TEU of containers, thereby increasing the total storage capacity of the CIP to more than 10,000 TEU at any given time.

At its maximum use, the total annual capacity of the existing CIP container yard, together with the CIP Finger Pier Yard, will be more than 90,000 TEU at an average dwell time of 4.5 days and 3 days, respectively.

CPA General Manager Leonilo Miole welcomed the OPASCOR initiative to help decongest the CIP.

He acknowledged the CIP suffers from a lack of berthing and docking spaces. With the newly constructed Finger Pier, the current berthing area for foreign cargoes shall be primarily used to service vessels carrying containerized cargo as it can now accommodate bigger containerized vessels or more vessels of the same size as those presently calling at the CIP.

It was also constructed and designed so that siltation from the creek beside the facility is effectively barred from ruining the existing berth area.

As of December 31,2018, the volume of cargo handled by the CIP increased by 10 percent for foreign containers, 45 percent for domestic containers and 10 percent for general cargo.

Riveral said in 15 years, they will turn-over the operation of the Finger Pier to the CPA.

On fee-sharing, the partners share equally for 15 years on cargo handling and 80/20 on storage fees.

“Whether we have return on investment within 15 years, we will turn over the operations to the CPA,” Riveral said.