DEVELOPMENT POTENTIALITY

On the international marine market, the development prospective have only the the ports which acts in the demand of modern traffic communication, that is that they make possible good and fast services. The main prerequisite condition for this kind of service is a highly equipped of the port and good earth traffic communication with the inside of the country. That means that all the Croatian ports should have modern infrastructure and superstructure.

With the end of the war in this region and the deblocation of the Lika railway ( which is the only connection to the inside of the country ), there is now the possibility of revitalization of the middle Dalmatian ports, and specially the port of Split merchant port. That could be seen in the data about the realization of the traffic in the year 1996, in which the traffic has rose to many time more than in the year 1995. (see table 1.)

The forthcoming modernization of the Lika railway (which will shorten the voyage from Split to Zagreb from 10 to 5 hours), and the future opening of the UNA railway, will help of getting back the lost load and getting new one. Also the opening of the duty free zone in the port of Split is attracting more foreign partners and opening possibilities of added use of the ports capacities (recently was opened a big cooling room in the duty free zone).

With all that was mentioned it can be seen that the port of Split has a good development prospective.