Why should we give importance to maritime transport?

Have you ever designed a harbour?

Port design has its own parameters.

If we consider only the construction, there are a lot of wave formulas and breakwater calculations to make preliminary decisions. You also need to carefully choose the location of the harbour.

I have never worked on this subject in my professional business life. 

However, I took a harbour design course as an elective course at university. I don't remember the details now, but I remember that I wrote an optimisation program on harbour design in the graduation project of the course because I was a bit obsessed with computer programming at that time.

Naturally, mine was a simple program on optimising the length of the breakwater by transferring some ready-made graphics on the calming of waves in the harbour by means of breakwaters to the computer environment and using the formulas I extracted from the graphics. The hardest part of the programme was to fit the graphics into formulas.

Of course, I don't have the codes of that programme today, everything remained in my university years.

Anyway, probably today, much more professional programmes have been produced on these issues and who knows with what different criteria it has become possible to design harbours.

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Yes, our country is indeed a country covered with seas on three sides and I think that our existing harbours are quite small.

I don't want to go into the issues of the ports that are available being looted by the government to some organisations, but it is a fact that I have to say that there is still a lot of potential investment to be made in this field.

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Of course, investments such as ports are very large investments, and these investments require very large amounts of money.

Moreover, such an investment budget is not only limited to construction costs. This is also a big strategic investment.

First of all, you will say that you are politically involved in international maritime transport and you will create opportunities for this with state support.

In other words, you will be strong in the international arena. 

Our country is actually a bridge between Europe and Asia geographically in terms of trade. 

I can even say that we are the country in the most favourable position for a production travelling from Asia to reach the European markets.

The transportation of Asian production to our ports also requires railway transport and I remember that I wrote an article on this subject before.

However, although it does not make sense to me, politically, almost every government of the present and the past has favoured road transport.

For this purpose, we have built many wide roads on the country, which has a mountainous structure, requiring a very large investment cost. Many of them are of poor quality.

However, since maritime transport is sufficient with the cost of the port to be made (after all, you no longer have the cost of building a road on the sea!), it can be said that it requires considerably lower costs compared to road transport.

OK, it is not only the harbour cost that is needed, but also the establishment of large sea fleets is not an easy task. 

However, in my opinion, it was something that could have been done in all these years with the incentives to be given to the private sector to establish maritime fleets.

If the aim was to have a say in international maritime, this issue could have been resolved long ago.

Moreover, the shipbuilding sector in our country is not at a negligible level. We have quite a lot of shipyards. We build and sell high quality, in-demand ships to many parts of the world.

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So is it too late?

I think no, there is still a lot that can be done.

Don't say that we should build harbours everywhere.

Of course it would not be enough, as I said, this is both a political and strategic decision. 

You will prioritise maritime transport!

You will say that we are opening to the seas!

You will establish sea fleets!

You will give opportunities not only to yourself but also to everyone who is interested. 

If necessary, you will create opportunities for small investors to become partners.

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Harbour constructions? 

They are just a drop in the bucket, first prove that you exist in the international arena, the rest is easy. 

For this, as a state, see maritime transport as your priority target.

Remember, just as tourism is seen as a saviour in terms of foreign currency income, maritime transport can also be a great source of foreign currency for the country.

After all, we are covered with seas on three sides, let's appreciate it.

My love and respect to everyone from Moscow.