By Andrés Orrego Siebert
In a context where international trade is being redefined by new routes, sustainability pressures and the unstoppable advance of global shipping lines, Latin American ports seem to be at a crossroads. They have valuable assets and experienced operators, but they carry structural lags that threaten their competitiveness.
This was stated, in an interview with PortalPortuario, by Octavio Doerr, an international consultant in port planning and governance with more than three decades of experience in Latin America and the Caribbean, who offered a diagnosis of the current situation in key countries such as Chile, Peru, Colombia and Argentina. With a critical but constructive view, he insists that it is not about inventing new formulas, but about adapting what already works and decisively confronting the inertia and resistance that have hindered change for too long.
How would you describe the Latin American port system today?
It is a system with relevant assets and capable operators, but with marked asymmetries between the maritime and land sides. We have advanced in concessioned terminals and equipment, but we are still behind in major infrastructure, hinterland connectivity, institutional coordination and collaborative digitalization. Competition is no longer between individual ports, Latin American ports no longer compete with each other, but between integrated logistics corridors. The one that manages to articulate its ecosystem well – infrastructure, governance, data and sustainability – is the one that wins.
What structural forces are reconfiguring that board?
There are three main vectors. First, maritime scale: increasingly larger ships that require ports with greater draft and more intensive call windows. Second, the recomposition of logistics chains, marked by trends such as nearshoring, the rise of e-commerce and the vertical integration of shipping lines into land logistics. And third, a new social license around sustainability: the pressure to decarbonize, reduce emissions and better manage environmental and urban impact. If we do not translate these vectors into capacity planning, digital interoperability and ESG metrics, the gap with leading hubs will continue to widen.
What is the diagnosis for Chile?
In Chile, the concession model of the nineties allowed for the modernization of management and attracted operators, but today it is exhausted for large-scale projects; the absence of a macro-zonal entity and the lack of clear rules for reconcessions generate uncertainty, while the Puerto Exterior of San Antonio remains postponed despite being critical for national competitiveness.
How are the other countries in the region doing?
The country-by-country diagnosis reveals different realities but with a common denominator: the urgency to update institutional frameworks and long-term strategies.
In Peru, Callao retains its central role but its congestion showed the limits of the current model, and the emergence of Chancay, with large-scale private investment, is a transpacific bet that will only be successful if it is integrated with interior corridors like Huachipa, coordinates with Callao and avoids being an isolated enclave; shared governance and the standardization of processes will be key for it to become an engine of development.
In Colombia, hubs like Cartagena, Buenaventura, and Santa Marta strengthen the supply, but land connectivity remains deficient and the institutional framework, too focused on individual contracts, prevents thinking in integrated corridors that link ports, roads, and railways under a national vision. In Argentina, the jurisdictional fragmentation between federal, provincial, and private ports, combined with macroeconomic instability, discourages long-term investment. Buenos Aires remains in a concession limbo that reduces certainty and competitiveness, while Rosario, key in agro-export trade, faces limitations in river and land infrastructure. The Argentine challenge is twofold: to give regulatory stability to Buenos Aires and modernize the logistics of the littoral to sustain its role in the global grain trade.
Common points are found…
In summary, each country faces particular dilemmas, but the conclusion is shared: without greater institutional coordination, adequate land infrastructure, and stable and predictable regulatory frameworks, port advances will remain partial in the face of an increasingly demanding global competition scenario.
What are the critical knots that block competitiveness?
There are five. Physical and functional capacity, which implies draft, berthing fronts, yards, and adequate road and rail access. Governance, too fragmented among multiple actors without real coordination. Collaborative digitalization, which requires community port systems and shared data governance. Pro-competition regulation, indispensable in a context of vertical integration of shipping lines. And finally, sustainability, which must stop being seen as a cost and be assumed as a competitive advantage, through electrification, efficiency, and transparent environmental reporting.
What international models are translatable to the region?
It is not about inventing anything, but about adapting what has already proven results. Rotterdam and Antwerp show how port development companies with a territorial mandate can align investment, logistics, and sustainability. Germany has managed to coordinate logistics planning at the federal level. Australia has combined private concessions with a coherent national framework. Singapore and South Korea prove that digitalization and public-private coordination sustain global leadership. In all cases, there is a constant: solid and neutral governance, with the capacity to orchestrate investments and processes.
Among your proposals appears the Regional Port Development and Integration Company (Edipr). What is it and what is it for?
The Edipr is a public-private entity with a territorial and multimodal mandate. Its role would be to coordinate projects, structure modern financing with blended instruments, deploy digital platforms, and lead sustainability agendas. It does not replace port companies or concessionaires, but rather articulates them, generating coherence between planning, execution, and operation.
It is a Latin American adaptation of models like Rotterdam, Vancouver, or Busan, where the port is conceived as an engine for regional development beyond its docks.
How does sustainability fit into the competitiveness equation?
It is not a cost, it is an advantage. The electrification of docks and equipment, efficiency in last-mile flows, and community dialogue can reduce operational costs, improve the social license, and facilitate access to green financing. Incorporating auditable ESG metrics and clear goals per ton mobilized will allow the sector to align with global demands and, at the same time, generate local benefits in air quality and employment.
What could be a concrete example of application?
In Peru, the Callao–Chancay–Huachipa corridor could start with a unified PCS, coordinated berthing windows, urban truck control, and a logistics node in Huachipa as an inland lung. In Chile, the San Antonio–Valparaíso macro-zone should sequence the Puerto Exterior together with dedicated road and rail access, increase the rail share in containerized cargo, and implement an air quality plan with OPS.
Where does port regionalization fit into your vision?
It is the logical step. The port is no longer an isolated infrastructure, but a territorial system that integrates the city, corridors, and communities. The EDIPR is the instrument to operationalize that regionalization, aligning municipalities, ministries, concessionaires, customs, and operators under a common plan with measurable goals and structured financing.
Ports do not end at the docks; their competitiveness depends on the hinterland. How is the region in this matter and what must change to better integrate ports and productive territories?
One of the major deficits in Latin America is the lack of hinterland integration. For years, investment went into terminals and port equipment, but much less into rail and road access or inland logistics nodes, which causes modern ports to end up trapped in bottlenecks where costs skyrocket before and after the dock. The rail share in containerized cargo remains marginal, and consolidation zones or intermodal centers are scarce or disjointed. Overcoming this gap requires conceiving the hinterland as an integral part of port infrastructure: planning access from the start, developing nodes that act as logistics lungs, and aligning urban management to avoid conflicts. A port without an efficient hinterland is just an expensive bottleneck; an integrated one can transform into the engine of an entire export corridor.
What conditions does Latin America need to consolidate regional corridors that compete on a global scale?
Today, competition occurs between integrated logistics corridors that combine ports, roads, railways, airports, and inland nodes in a single system, while in Latin America, isolated terminals still predominate, which fragments the supply and reduces competitiveness against global hubs that operate in a network. To consolidate regional corridors, institutional coordination is needed between transport, customs, port authorities, and local governments; intermodal infrastructure that ensures railways, high-standard roads, and efficient inland logistics zones; and cross-cutting digitalization through PCS with a single window and real-time traceability.
If the region manages to advance in this direction, it will be able to compete as a bloc against Asia-Europe or North America with lower costs and more predictable times; otherwise, it will remain trapped in the logic of individual ports competing with each other while losing ground to more advanced hubs.
Beyond technique and projects, there is a fundamental problem: the incumbents, the status quo and the resistance to change. How do you diagnose it?
The greatest challenge for ports in Latin America is not technical but institutional and political: for decades, interests that benefit from a fragmented, non-transparent model with no strategic planning have been consolidated, functional for some, but costly for all, with chronic congestion, postponed projects and overruns that affect national competitiveness. Resistance to change takes various forms, from sovereignty discourses that justify inaction to blocking digitalization for fear of exposing inefficiencies, although not all incumbents are irreconcilable and some can become allies if offered incentives such as green financing, certifications or participation in pilots.
How do you confront it?
Overcoming this reality requires three key moves: demonstrating with data the country cost of inefficiency, showing early and visible results -such as reduced truck times or electrification of docks- and shielding governance with independent boards and public dashboards that make it difficult to go back. The dilemma is not to preserve the status quo nor to destroy it suddenly, but to gradually dismantle the rents of the past, add legitimacy around the actors that evolve and replace the old model with a system based on efficiency, transparency and sustainability.
