Port-City Development: The Spanish Case

[Abstract]: The objective of this paper is to try to evaluate the port-city relationship from its onset, taking into account the challenges of port 4.0. Indicators such as the percentage of employees participating in training programs, the percentage of female employees in Galician ports, the percentage of merchandise moved by private operators and the percentage of companies with quality certification in Galician ports are evaluated. The fourth revolution is based on the transition from current fossil fuel-based energy models to alternative energy sources, changes in the logistics and transport parameters and finally, on the elimination of intermediation. The key component of the third pillar of new Economy 4.0 is complete digitalization. The optimum port-city solution must address the need of both the urban planner and the port manager to evaluate potential measures that would alleviate the pressure of dedicated port facilities on the city and vice versa to the greatest extent possible

Infrastructure performance and reform in developing and transition economies: evidence from a survey of productivity measures

The authors review about 80 studies on electricity and gas, water and sanitation, and rail and ports (with a footnote on telecommunications) in developing countries. The main policy lesson is that there is a difference in the relevance of ownership for efficiency between utilities and transport in developing countries. In transport, private operators have tended to perform better than public operators. For utilities, ownership often does not matter as much as sometimes argued. Most cross-country studies find no statistically significant difference in efficiency scores between public and private providers. As for the country-specific studies, some do find differences in performance over time but these differences tend to matter much less than a large number of other variables. Across sectors, private operators functioning in a competitive environment or regulated under price caps or hybrid regulatory regimes tend to catch up best practice faster than public operators. There is a very strong case to push regulators in developing and transition economies toward a more systematic reliance on yardstick competition in a sector in which residual monopoly powers tend to be common.Enterprise Development&Reform,Labor Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance

Competitiveness of Arabian gulf ports from shipping lines’ perspectives: Case of Sohar port in Oman

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate the factors that encourage shipping lines to use port of Sohar, in Oman. Some selected factors were used to assess to what extent it affects the port choice from shipping lines companies’ perspective. These factors include infrastructure, hinterland, connectivity and port’s dues. Design/methodology/approach: for this study both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used. Self-administered questionnaire used for collecting quantitative data while interviews were used to collect qualitative data. Secondary data was collected by reviewing academic literature and recent relevant articles and reports. Findings: Port of Sohar has a better opportunity to be the gateway of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States and all Cargo could have dropped in the port and transferred to other GCC States by road, rail and other transportation modes. This opportunity is gained by the strategic location of Sohar Port outside of the Strait of Hormuz. It can be concluded that port competitiveness can be improved through strategic location, improved hinterland conditions, port facilities, services cost, volume of cargo, connectivity to other ports and dwell time factor. Research limitations: The research was limited mainly by conducting it only at the port of Sohar because surrounding ports are too far away and it should involve more ports to gain comparative results. Limited number of stakeholders as Port Authority, Oman International Container Terminal (OICT) and shipping lines companies and agents is another limitation. Practical implications: The port can improve its competitive advantages and focus on the investigated factors. The government can also continue in working in the three big infrastructural projects; the new express roads, Sohar Airport and rail network connections with other GCC networks. Originality/value: the study used specific factors that expected to contribute to the shipping lines companies’ selection of ports in the gulf region. This could help the port to identify their competitive advantage and how they can use these competencies to improve their competitiveness in relation to other ports in the region.Peer Reviewe

Why Does cargo spend weeks in African ports ? the case of Douala, Cameroon

This paper investigates the main factors explaining long container dwell times in African Ports. Using original and extensive data on container imports in the Port of Douala, it seeks to provide a basic understanding of why containers stay on average more than two weeks in gateway ports in Africa while long dwell times are widely recognized as a critical hindrance to economic development. It also demonstrates the interrelationships that exist between logistics performance of consignees, operational performance of port operators and efficiency of customs clearance operations. Shipment level analysis is used to identify the main determinants of long cargo dwell times and the impact of shipment characteristics such as fiscal regime, density of value, bulking and packaging type, last port of call, and region of origin or commodity group on cargo dwell time in ports is tested. External factors, such as performance of clearing and forwarding agents, shippers and shipping line strategies, also play an important role in the determination of long dwell times. Cargo dwell time distribution has many specificities, including broad-tail, high variance or right-censoring, which requires in-depth statistical analysis prior to any design of policy recommendations.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,E-Business,Customs and Trade

Benchmarking Environmental Efficiency of Ports Using Data Mining and RDEA: The Case of a U.S. Container Ports

This study provides step-wise benchmarking practices of each port to enhance the environmental performance using a joint application of the data-mining technique referred to as Kohonen’s self-organizing map (KSOM) and recursive data envelopment analysis (RDEA) to address the limitation of the conventional data envelopment analysis. A sample of 20 container ports in the U.S.A. were selected, and data on input variables (number of quay crane, acres, berth and depth) and output variables (number of calls, throughput and deadweight tonnage, and CO2 emissions) are used for data analysis. Among the selected samples, eight container ports are found to be environmentally inefficient. However, there appears to be a high potential to become environmentally efficient ports. In conclusion, it can be inferred that the step-wise benchmarking process using two combined methodologies substantiates that a more applicable benchmarking target set of decision-making units is be projected, which consider the similarity of the physical and operational characteristics of homogenous ports for improving environmental efficiency

International benchmarking of container stevedoring

Productivity at Australian container terminals has improved significantly in absolute terms since 1997 according to this international benchmarking study. For the sample of ship calls and terminals studied, productivity improved also in relative terms. The productivity improvement at Australian terminals was generally greater than at overseas terminals between 1997 and 2002. The study suggests there may be scope for further gains in the relative performance of Australian terminals.Awards; Baggage; Benchmarking; Bulk Cargo; Break-bulk Cargo; Container Stevedoring; Containers; Contracting; Cranes; Cruise Ships; Customs; Enterprise Bargaining; Exporters; Exports; Fertiliser; Government Charges; Importers; Imports; Manning; Marine; Maritime; Mooring; Occupational Health and Safety; Outsourcing; Performance; Pilotage; Port Authority; Port-land Interface; Ports; Productivity; Quarantine; Redundancy; Remuneration; Rostering; Sea Trade; Shift Work; Stevedoring; Terminal; Terminal Operations; Towage; Unmooring; Waterfront; Wheat; Work Arrangements; Workplace Agreements;

Productivity Drivers in Japanese Seaports

This paper analyses efficiency drivers of a representative sample of Japanese seaports by means of the two-stage procedure proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007). In the first stage, the technical efficiency of seaports is estimated using several models of data envelopment analysis (DEA) that might be employed in order to establish which of them are most efficient. In the second stage, the Simar and Wilson (2007) procedure is used to bootstrap the DEA scores with a truncated bootstrapped regression to identify efficiency drivers. The policy implications of our findings are considered.Seaports; Japan; Data Envelopment Analysis; Truncated Bootstrapped Regression.

International benchmarking of the Australian waterfront

This study is part of a continuing program of research into the performance of economic infrastructure industries, which was commenced by the Bureau of Industry Economics. It is the third Waterfront Benchmarking report in the cycle. The study builds on the two previous waterfront studies by providing new insights into timeliness, reliability and the economic consequences of failure to match levels of performance achieved overseas. It is based on data collected throughout 1997.benchmarking - waterfront - ports - pilotage - towage - mooring - unmooring - sea trade - stevedoring - terminal operations - port authority - performance - baggage - wheat - fertiliser - bulk cargo - break-bulk cargo - cruise ships - port-land interface - customs - quarantine - importers - imports - exporters - exports - cranes - containers - maritime - marine - government charges - terminal - enterprise bargaining

The impact of governance on efficiency: case studies on airports and seaports

Airports and seaports have experienced significant governance reforms over the last few decades. As major airports are argued to have market power, they are subject to some form of economic regulation. Airports used to be subject to rate-of-return regulation. More recently, there has been a reform in airport economic regulation and they are increasingly being subject to incentive based price-cap regulation and light-handed regulation or monitoring. In the policy debate, it is of interest to analyse whether price-cap regulation and light-handed regulation of airports are superior to rate-of-return regulation. In the case of seaports, there has been a reform in their governance model and a large number of seaports now follow the landlord seaport model. In a landlord seaport, the port authority is responsible for monitoring and coordination while specialized private terminal operators are responsible for cargo handling and seaport operations. Policy debates have focused on whether the landlord seaport model leads to superior performance in comparison to the service seaport model where most responsibilities are handled by the port authority or the public sector. Airports and seaports are increasingly being regulated by independent regulators because they are not susceptible to regulatory capture. Policy debates have also focused on whether independent regulators lead to a superior performance in comparison to dependent regulators. The first part of this thesis focuses on airport regulation and its impact on efficiency. We conduct a literature review of the theoretical and empirical literature on airport regulation and efficiency. We find that dual-till price-cap regulation and light-handed regulation are preferable to rate-of-return regulation from an efficiency perspective. We also find that while light-handed regulation leads to efficient airports, it does not necessarily constrain airport charges and hence does not lead to the cheapest airports. We find that independent regulators enhance airport performance. With respect to slot allocation, we find that slot allocation is superior to queuing in terms of capacity, delay and congestion management. However, we find that slot allocation based on economic principles is superior to administrative slot allocation. In this part of the thesis, we also identify gaps in the empirical literature which require further analysis. The next part of the thesis focuses on the impact of governance on the technical efficiency of major Indian seaports. This chapter uses a non-oriented slacks based measure of technical efficiency in the first stage and a fixed effects regression in the second stage in order to analyse the impact of governance on the technical efficiency of the major Indian seaports. From the first stage, we find that most of the seaports have a scope for improvement in technical efficiency. From the second stage analysis, we find that specialization has the highest positive impact on technical efficiency. We hence propose that the major Indian seaports have to specialize because they can benefit from economies of scale. With respect to ownership, we find that external stakeholder participation has a significant positive impact on technical efficiency. This gives evidence that the landlord seaport model is conducive to enhanced technical efficiency. With respect to competition, we find that competition from the non-major Indian seaports from within the state and along the coast has a significant negative impact on the technical efficiency of the major Indian seaports. We argue that this is because of the tiered governance framework, which results in excess capacity at the major Indian seaports. We propose that the seaports should have a common governance, institutional and regulatory framework, which can enhance their performance. With respect to regulation, we find that rate-of-return regulation by an independent regulator is superior to internal regulation by the port authority in terms of technical efficiency. We argue that this is because the independent regulator is not susceptible to regulatory capture unlike the port authorities. The last part of the thesis focuses on the impact of governance on the technical efficiency of container ports from the Far East and Asian region. This chapter uses stochastic frontier analysis in order to estimate a production frontier. It makes use of a single step procedure which can be used to estimate the production frontier as well as to estimate the impact of the governance-related contextual variables on the technical efficiency of these container ports. We estimate the individual as well as the combined effects of the governance-related contextual variables on the technical efficiency of these container ports. From the individual effects model, we find that majority private container ports are significantly more technically efficient in comparison to minority private container ports. This gives evidence that the landlord seaport model is conducive to enhanced technical efficiency. With respect to competition, from the individual effects model, we find that both hinterland and transshipment competition enhance the technical efficiency of these container ports. With respect to regulation, from the individual effects model, we find that regulation by an independent regulator is the most conducive to enhanced technical efficiency. In the combined effects model, a majority private container port which faces high hinterland competition and has no economic regulation is taken as the base case. Most of the other combinations of the contextual variables result in a significantly lower technical efficiency in comparison to the base case. However, a majority private container port which faces low hinterland competition and either has no economic regulation or is regulated by an independent regulator is significantly more technically efficient in comparison to the base case. Our results further show that when a port is majority private and faces low hinterland competition, regulation by an independent regulator results in a significantly higher technical efficiency in comparison to having no economic regulation. We argue that this is caused because there is excessive entry and hence majority private container ports which face low hinterland competition and are regulated by an independent regulator are the most technically efficient. We propose that along with the setting up of independent regulators for container ports, policymakers should also ensure that entry is at an optimal level, which can result in competition that is effective and technical efficiency enhancing