New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
Port Hedland’s Utah Point Bulk Handling facility is one of the assets up for sale.
The state of Western Australia announced Thursday it plans to sell about $2 billion worth of government-owned assets, including part of the Port Hedland shipping terminal, as its resource-heavy economy deals with the end of a decade-long mining boom.
This way the iron ore-rich state, where most of Australia’s ore is mined, has become the latest of the country’s debt-laden regional governments to announce a selloff of state-owned infrastructure.
The move, Reuters report, will be followed by other unspecified sales of land and assets that could fetch between A$4 to A$5 billion.
Australian states are moving in greater numbers toward a grand selloff of government-owned assets ranging from ports to highways, as they scramble to raise as much as $300 billion to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure.
Earlier this year, New South Wales sold a 99-year lease on Newcastle Port—the world’s biggest—to a clutch of Chinese and local buyers for A$1.75 billion. That followed the sale last year of the state’s Port Botany shipping-container facility.
In November, Queensland state sold the Port of Brisbane for A$2.3 billion to a consortium of pension and sovereign-wealth funds, followed this year by the sale of toll-road operator Queensland Motorways for A$7.06 billion.
Port Hedland’s Utah Point bulk handling facility is one of four berths owned by the Pilbara Ports Authority. It includes a ship loader, two stockyard product storage facilities and supporting infrastructure.
2 Comments
Random Bloke.
The internal term is recycling capital to deploy elsewhere. If it is deployed efficiently that has higher returns than current use, that is good. If it is squandered, then that is bad.
What are politicians good at? Efficient use of money or squandering? Thats the real question.
Pile the money back into the ground for actual measured efficiency improvements and this could be successful. Request the new buyers pour some efficient capital into the bought assets and this makes the economy better overall on a macro scale.
See what happens.
HardWorker
Good to see the Western Government catching up to the Eastern States,
Sell off all the money making assets, remove all the debt this year, too bad if you don’t have any revenue for the future.
Great fore sight again shown by Government.
If they put a $1 per tonne on shipping through the Port they would have that $4B paid down in around 10 years time and have future income.
It’s the equivalent of selling your work ute, that you use to get to work to make money, just because you want to get rid of the debt on the big screen TV.
And as Random Bloke said, stop squandering the money.