Canada will invest billions of dollars to decongest Vancouver port

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday that Canada will provide billions of dollars to help improve infrastructure and ease congestion at the country's largest port in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The money is intended to address warnings that restrictions at Canada's ports pose a considerable obstacle in efforts to reduce reliance on cross-border trade with the U.S. to drive growth.

Carney said the Canadian government will provide the equivalent of $7 billion to expand the capacity of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. At a news conference in the Pacific Coast city, he said infrastructure improvements will help unlock more than $70 billion in new trade capacity and add more than $2 billion in production.

Carney, and BoC (Bank of Canada) analysts, warned this year that the country has fallen behind in upgrading the infrastructure of its seaports. The central bank warned that strains on port capacity threatened to thwart Carney's attempt to diversify trade into new markets outside the US.

The Port of Vancouver handles about $700 million in trade each day, and more cargo than the next five largest Canadian ports combined.

The port's success "is now straining capacity and bottlenecks are getting worse," Carney said. "Ships wait to load their cargo. It takes a long time for imported goods to reach Canadians. This slows down our trade, causes new business to be lost to the U.S., increases prices here at home and slows down our economy."

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Source: CNN