BRUSSELS: Kuwait Port Authority participants with officials from the Port Authority of Antwerp. - KUNA

ANTWERP: The cooperation between the Port Authority of Antwerp in Belgium and the Kuwait Port Authority (KPA) is strong and growing and expanding, according to officials from Belgium and Kuwait. This position was expressed at the closing ceremony of a two-week international training course on Port Business Development and Marketing held in Antwerp Friday evening.

Around 15 delegates from KPA took part in the seminar held from 25 November until 6 December. Present at the event Ambassador of Kuwait for Belgium, the EU and NATO, Jassem Al-Budaiwi said that "our participation today is to give support to the participants from the KPA who are taking part in a high quality and intensive and productive seminar for two weeks in Antwerp which has one of the best ports in the world." He said the participants came from various KPA departments like communications, legal, radar and captains. This training course comes as part of a series of training courses that the KPA has established with the Antwerp port, he noted.

Budaiwi took the opportunity to commend the Director General of Kuwait Ports Authority Sheikh Yousef Abdullah Al-Sabah for initiating this training programmed and for the "wonderful relationship" between the ports of the two countries. "I would like to commend him and tell him thank you very much for this," said Budaiwi. The embassy of Kuwait in Belgium remains committed to support all sorts of activities and visits of delegations from Kuwait to boost the relationship with Belgium, he added.

Meanwhile, Kristoff Watershoot, managing director of Antwerp port training center said the seminar is a "major step in our collaboration with KPA where we launched two years ago our cooperation with the participation of Sheikh Yousef Abdullah Al- Sabah In a seminar here in Antwerp." "We have a very good exchange and collaboration between the KPA and our training centre," he said. "We had 15 participants this time and earlier this year another ten participants from Kuwait," he noted. "There are lot of possibilities for the growth and cooperation between each other," he said and noted there are a lot of possibilities for further flows in trade between the two countries.

Tayyaba Majid Al-Shatti, director of media and public relations in the KPA said 15 employees from different areas and sections of the KPA attended this seminar. "It was a very useful seminar and we learnt a lot from it and we shall profit from it in our work," she said. She noted that the cooperation between the two ports is not new but that it began several years ago by the dispatch of KPA employees to learn from the expertise of the port of Antwerp. She thanked the port of Antwerp for hosting this course. "Our stay here was very pleasant and useful. We also thank the ambassador Jassem Al-Budaiwi for attending the closing ceremony," added Shatti.

In the meantime, Captain Ahmad Al-Otaibi said the training course was "very useful and we learnt many good things." "The cooperation between the port of Antwerp and the port of Kuwait is strong and we hope it would be even stronger," he added. The port of Antwerp, about 50 kilometers north of Brussels, is the second-largest seaport in Europe after Rotterdam in the Netherlands. - KUNA