Channel deepening there has become a hot potato for the government which has faced protests from local communities fearing environmental damage. The government has had to spell out in considerable depth the economic case for the proposal, which would deepen the channel to 14 metres.<\/p>\n
Meyrick & Associates, contributors to PS, were engaged as advisers and found direct economic benefits of US$1.076bn over 25 years. Steve Meyrick also found that the bulk of the benefits of channel deepening will be directed to container shipping while significant indirect benefits will flow to the Victorian and Australian economies.<\/p>\n
Indirect impacts in the order of US$15m may occur in the aquaculture, fishing, eco-tourism and recreational diving industries. These disbenefits were found to be outweighed by the benefits of the project. He did not identify any negative long term economic impacts from the project. The primary short term negative economic impact is the cost of the resources that will be consumed in undertaking the project estimated at US$367m.<\/p>\n
Residual indirect costs may also fall upon vessel delays during dredging and possible disruption to shipping by a channel blockage.<\/p>\n
The report’s key findings indicate that environmental impacts on Port Phillip Bay will be temporary and can be managed sustainably. But unless the channels are dredged, more than 30% of bulk and container ships calling at Melbourne will continue to be unable to load to their full capacity because of depth limitations, a restriction which is expected to worsen as the size of vessels entering the port increases over time.<\/p>\n
Meyrick further reports: “? the reduction in shipping costs, although initially flowing to shipowners, will ultimately flow to exporters and importers through lower freight rates.<\/p>\n
Because the price elasticity of demand for Australian exports is typically quite high, and the elasticity of demand for imports relatively low, a large part of the benefits will ultimately be reflected in lower prices to Australian consumers and higher net returns to Australian exporters. This is turn will enhance the competitiveness of Australian industry and raise the material living standards of Australian residents.”<\/p>\n
Asked whether anything had changed since his report, Meyrick told PS of a significant change in that that trade in the port of Melbourne is now growing at 9% rather than the 5.5% expected, although this may not continue indefinitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the dredging business the impact of environmental and social factors can never be overlooked and there is no better example of these interests clashing with commercial and economic considerations than Port Phillip Bay, the conduit to the port of Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2412"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}