Is it fair to say that the port has been performing reasonably well in 2003? Yes. Beirut Port has been performing well with regards to imports and total revenues, which increased from $71 million in 2002 to $75 million last year. A much talked-about issue is the project of putting the port’s container terminal into business. Is the tender for finding an operator progressing? It is ready. We have completed the tender documents, and they are now with the minister for final approval. How long until an operator would be able to come in? In the tender documents, we specified one-and-a-half months to receive responses from interested operators, but we think that we should extend that to perhaps two months. For the phase from awarding the contract, we have scheduled three to four months for the operator to mobilize and start operations. In total, we are talking about half a
