The silent cost overruns that burden the Port of Las Palmas not only impact the business community, but also infiltrate the daily lives of thousands of Canarians in the south of Gran Canaria and their businesses. The Maximum Business Rate (TME), a surcharge that was supposed to be eliminated in 2007, now increases the cost of food, fuel, and goods that supply hotels, restaurants, and tourist services in the archipelago. The result: a model that increases the cost of the tourist experience and penalizes those who sustain economic activity from the ground up. Rather than providing solutions, it perpetuates a problem that has been entrenched for two decades.
The Gran Canarian employers' association has repeatedly called on the Las Palmas Port Authority, which relies directly or indirectly on tourism from the Canary Islands' economic capital, Maspalomas, to eliminate the Maximum Business Rate, a surcharge on imports that has been in place for almost 18 years to cover the debt of the former Sestiba. The additional cost, approximately €2,5 million annually, is ultimately passed on to consumers. The Canary Islands Business Confederation believes this tax is no longer justified, given that the debt now belongs to the privatized company Sagep.
The TME was implemented in 2003 with the aim of offsetting the deficit accumulated by the former state-owned stevedoring company, Sestiba. The fee, of 0,80 cents per ton moved, was supposed to last until 2007. However, not only did it not disappear, but it has served—according to documents and reports to which we have access—to feed an opaque structure that has survived presidents, crises, and reforms in Las Palmas. No one intervenes in this matter for fear of the stevedores, but everyone else pays for it.
For years, this tax has financed a growing debt—which now exceeds €24 million—that has continued to grow despite the decline in port activity, mass early retirements, and staff reductions. How did we get to this point? The answer points directly to ill-founded decisions, fictitious forecasts, and a culture of waste protected by a lack of institutional oversight.
The most illustrative case is the 1,5 million loan that Sestiba allegedly granted to a private port company, using funds raised through the TME. According to the State Comptroller's Office, this transaction does not appear in the entity's actual accounting records. Nor is there any record of any attempt to recover this money.
Beyond the financial crisis, the real impact of this system is felt by businesses, consumers, and tourists. Few business associations have been denouncing for years the additional costs of operating in Las Palmas, an island within the Spanish port system. The economic burden of the TME is passed on to the final price of products, making living on the archipelago more expensive and reducing the competitiveness of the Canary Islands' business community as a tourist destination.
Meanwhile, the management of the current Sagep—the privatized successor to Sestiba—remains under suspicion. Cooked accounts, alleged disproportionate union spending, and a lack of political will to dismantle the whole scheme are some of the factors that have consolidated what many are now calling a "revolutionary tax." A tax that, paradoxically, has also failed to save the very society it was intended to rescue.
The clash between operators, unions, and the Port Authority is no coincidence. The growing influence of large international shipping lines and the need to attract cruise passengers with multimillion-dollar bonuses are displacing those who sustain the port's daily economic activity. Local business leaders, caught between inherited debt and unfulfilled promises, are skeptical of each new agreement presented as a pact of unity.
What's happening in Las Palmas isn't just a port crisis. It's an example of how a lack of transparency, political patronage, and institutional inaction can make an unviable model chronic. A model that, far from addressing its shortcomings, has ended up creating a structural one that threatens the sustainability of one of the archipelago's main economic drivers. And while responsibilities are diluted among boardrooms, technical reports, and declarations of goodwill, the TME continues. Silent, invisible, but lethal for the productive economy of the Canary Islands.
