WHY DO LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORT MATTER FOR DEVELOPMENT

In face of the challenges of global competition, business firms are concentrating more on the needs of customers and seeking ways to reduce costs, improve quality and meet the ever-rising expectation of their customers. To these ends, many of them have identified logistics as an area to build cost and service advantages. Logistical activities have always been vital to organizations, and therefore business logistics and supply chain management represents a synthesis of many concepts, principles, and methods from the more traditional areas of production, purchasing, transportation, economics, as well as from the disciplines of applied mathematics, and organizational behaviour. It concentrates on important activities of management such as planning, organizing, and controlling, and also on a three-way relationship of related transportation, inventory, and location strategies, which are at the heart of good logistics planning and decision making. Selecting a good logistics strategy may yield a competitive advantage. Transportation provides the flow of materials, products and persons between production facilities, warehouses, distribution centers, terminals and customer locations. The progress in techniques and management principles improves the moving load, delivery speed, service quality, operation costs, the usage of facilities and energy saving. A strong system needs a clear frame of logistics and a proper transport implements and techniques to link the producing procedures. The transportation takes a crucial part in the management of logistic. Without well-developed transportation systems, logistics could not bring its advantages into full play. A good transport system in logistics activities could provide better logistics efficiency, reduce operation cost, and promote service quality. The process determines the efficiency of moving products and energy saving. Improvements in transportation and logistics make valuable contribution to production and consumption activities.That’s why the objective of this paper is to define and clarify the role of transportation in logistics and of logistics in development, for the reference of further improvement.The present study was undertaken to define and understand the elementary views of logistics and its various applications and the relationships between logistics and transportation

EU ADVANCEMENT WITHIN THE WORLD TRADE: AN OVERVIEW OF THE LAST YEARS

The expansion of global trade gained considerable force in the last decade, force that generated many transformations and changes. These transformations represent stronger improvements than expected, when compared with the preceding years, even if the trade growth remained below the average rate recorded in the ‘90s. Some of the improvements are supposed to be consequences of free trade areas expansion. In this sense the present paper aims to observe if the free trade agreements increased the members’ international trade and how much a stronger union perform comparing to a weaker one. It analyses the effects of total trade made by the members of the main five free trade agreements: EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, MERCOSUR, and ANDEAN PACT, between 2000 and 2010. In order to analyse the effects of the total trade made by the members of these unions, the authors used data collected from the WTO International Trade Statistics published in 2009 and 2011. For each one of the five unions was built a distinct chart which illustrates the variation of exports and imports during the analysed period of time, as well as the trends of these operations over these years. Comparing all these charts they concluded that EU trade significantly increased as more countries joined the group, in contrast to the other groups which maintained their level along the time. Moreover they have noted a gap between the exports and imports performed by EU and the ones performed by the other unions. EU commercial exchanges were by far superior to the ones of the other areas and, in the same time, the EU trade fluctuations are broader than the ones of the other areas. Perhaps in the next period of time the commercial exchanges of UE and NAFTA will enhance with these areas whose potential has not been fully harnessed. On the other hand, creating a large common market the EU - NAFTA will most certainly constitute a guarantee for global economic stability and sustained economic growth

POSSIBLE TRADE EFFECTS OF THE NEXT EUROPEAN UNION ENLARGEMENT

The European Union next enlargement will constitute a significant qualitative change in the structure of the current Union, as the accession of the Western Balkan countries and of Turkey in particular will bring a brand new set of economic problems. It is expected that this enlargement to have a considerable effect for the new entrants, as well as for the European Union as a whole.\r\nConsidering some of the aspects raised by a new extension, this article aims to observe the trade impact of a new enlargement with the membership of the Western Balkan countries and Turkey, as this new growth is expected to have a considerable effect for the new entrants and for the European Union as a whole.\r\nThis study is based on the compare of the potential trade creation effects with the trade diversion effects resulting from the removal of trade restrictions for Western Balkan countries and Turkey and the European Union, by using the revealed comparative advantage index.\r\nThe analyze objective was to estimate the degree of trade creation and trade diversion outcome on the EU countries when Western Balkan countries and Turkey are included into the Union market.\r\nThe obtained results suggest that the export structures differ significantly among Western Balkan countries and Turkey and the European Union. Based on the revealed comparative advantage indexes, the authors would expect an intra-regional trade creation effect, but also we expect a risk for the Eastern European countries trade with European Union, especially as a result of Turkey\\\'s accession into the European markets without any trade barriers.\r\nAs far as trade creation and trade diversion effects are concerned, they observed that Western Balkan countries and Turkey, probably, do not change the European Union position significantly because of their lower trade volume comparing with the one of the EU-27