A multipurpose port will be established is Suza, Qeshm Island, with a 700-million-euro budget fully funded by foreign investors, said Farzin Haqdel, financial and investment deputy of Qeshm Free Trade Zone Organization.
"The new port will transform the region into a major shipping hub, particularly for international trade and transit," IRNA quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
The new port within the coastal city of Suza has a plethora of advantages, including a 50-meter-long waterline that could turn the region into one of the world's most prominent seaports.
The favorable features of the port attract investments in areas of pier construction and cargo transportation to European states and those in East Asia.
Qeshm Island is located a few kilometers off the southern coasts of Iran (Persian Gulf), opposite the port city of Bandar Abbas with an array of industrial and trade capacities that entice foreign investors in infrastructural sectors.
It also includes one of the world's most strategically important waterways, the Strait of Hormuz between Sea of Oman and Persian Gulf.
"The depth of the waterline allows for docking very large crude carriers (supertankers also known as VLCCs) which is a huge advantage in the shipping industry," Haqdel noted.
Situated in a subtropical strip in the northern hemisphere along the Persian Gulf and on the rail route connecting northeast Europe to Asia, the geographically strategic location of the island could act as a trade booster for the new port.
Haqdel referred to the launch of the so-called "single-window system" -a trade facilitation idea that enables cross-border traders to submit regulatory documents at a single location and/or single entity – as one of the key policies of the QFTZO stressing that the mechanism accelerates magnetizing foreign capital.
