A prominent Maltese businessman has rejected concerns by Sicilian business owners over the new management of the Ragusa marina.
Their concerns were raised by local councillor Gaetano Mauro in a letter to the city’s mayor, Giuseppe Cassì in which he spoke of local business owners’ “dissent and concern”.
“They want to oust local entrepreneurship in favour of the one [Paul Gauci] coming from Malta,” wrote Mauro, according to media outlet Ragusa News.
“... there is also agitation for the modified use of all the premises on land that make up the infrastructure, initially intended for navigation service,” he continued, before asking if the city’s administration was aware of any “potential interests” held by Gauci close to the marina.
Gauci acquired the Marina di Ragusa in an undisclosed multi-million deal earlier this year after three years of negotiations.
He is the founder and main shareholder of PG Group, which runs the PAVI and PAMA supermarkets as well as the Zara brand in Malta.
The businessman plans to embellish the 750-berth harbour and has publicly announced the intention to open a new fast ferry service between Sicily and Malta called the
Ragusa Xpress. Gauci has already invested in a catamaran for the service, which will take 430 passengers and 21 cars or 65 motorcycles per trip.
In January, it was reported that the Ragusa-based company was aiming to introduce daily crossings by the summer, with each trip taking one hour 45-minutes.
Since then, there has been no further news about the service which, according to local newspaper Corriere di Ragusa, was supposed to have started operating last month.
It said that despite the capacity of the catamaran to transport cars and motorcycles, at present it was “not equipped for the embarkation and disembarkation of vehicles”.
The news site also reported on the concerns of local businesses, writing that some local operators had found themselves “cut off from economic development strategies”.
Others had been “co-opted with minimal shares” to the board of directors of a new company set up to manage the marina and an “ambitious” real estate investment programme linked to tourism, it wrote.
Responding to questions on Tuesday, Gauci told Times of Malta that concerns of Ragusan business owners were “totally unfounded,” adding that the major investments in the marina in recent months had been carried out almost entirely by Italian companies.
Rejecting the statement reported on Ragusa News, the businessman said the company managing the marina was fully invested in the port and was “not seeking any ulterior investments in its peripherals.”
When asked when the Ragusa Xpress would begin operations, Gauci replied that the company was “still waiting for the necessary permits to be issued,” and the service would start following this.
The Ragusa marina is known to regularly attract Maltese boat owners, including Prime Minister Robert Abela, and was constructed between 2007-2009 at a reported cost of around €75 million.