Private investment must be matched by public investment in Sines says mayor

The Mayor of Sines, Álvaro Beijinha, has warned that citizens living in the Sines municipality are “extremely worried” about the €20Bn of private investment earmarked for the borough, particularly in the Start Campus data centre and CALB battery factory.

Addressing business leaders at a debate organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Portugal (AmCham Portugal on the ‘Data-to-Doorstep’ Boom in Portugal: Data Centers, Submarine Cables and Logistics as the New Transatlantic Real Estate”, the Sines mayor said these projects and others would exacerbate pressure already felt in the municipality by locals regarding road accesses, housing and schools.

“The population is indeed apprehensive because everything else is lacking. Private investment is certainly not lacking, but accessibility is; housing is lacking, which is the central issue at the moment; the school is completely full”.

“This private investment must necessarily be accompanied by public investment, otherwise the pressure already being felt in this region will be exacerbated”, he said.

Although Start Campus, the developer of the 1.2GW Sines Start Campus Data Center in Portugal, implements social projects through its GAMMA Community Platform to support local communities in Sines and Santiago do Cacém, the key focus areas are mental health, elderly care, scientific literacy for children, and specialised education initiatives to foster local employability in the technology sector.

But badly needed infrastructures are also needed to meet the expected expansion from these types of projects.

And this included housing. “In the real estate market, in rentals, you won’t find anything for less than €2,000 euros.

A 30-year-old two-bedroom apartment costs €300,000 in Sines,” he pointed out, recalling that the municipality “is even one of the municipalities in the country with the highest average salary.”

And a municipality expecting an inflow of direct and indirect labour to work on the various projects simply doesn’t have the housing supply to meet projected demand.

The mayor recalled that “the Sines project” — where the country’s largest industrial zone is located — “said that a new town, Vila Nova de Santo André was also built to serve the working community, including motorway access roads linking Sines and Santo André and between Sines and Santiago do Cacém.

“Fifty years on and we still don’t have a connection to the A2 motorway. The freight railway is only now being completed. We don’t have passenger trains, which is fundamental to reducing pressure from a real estate perspective,” he argued.

“Many of these investments have huge tax sweeteners. In the case that is public, the CALB battery factory has a tax benefit package of around €350 million and some of this money would surely solve some of the problems,” he added.

Source: Essential Business