If you take Australia, for example, container handling operations are now basically the province of two terminal operators DP World\/P&O Ports and Patrick\/Toll. This duopoly has been in place for some time and while there have been a few selective attempts to scale the wall of this stronghold none have been successful and so the duopoly has continued basically unchallenged. But is this right? Has government been complacent in allowing this status quo to consolidate and expand its position?<\/p>\n
It seems there is now at least some thinking that this is the case: Sydney Port Corporation has declared its intention to exclude the two existing terminal operators from the bidding for its new Botany Bay container terminal when this process is initiated. Equally, it will be interesting to see the result of the tender called for a new container terminal concession in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
There is perhaps a mood now manifest in some Australian state governments and port corporations that “enough is enough” so far as the duopoly situation is concerned.The era of the duopoly has seen significant improvements in port and terminal performance but tellingly it has not ticked all the boxes when it comes down to reducing costs and this therefore provides a major incentive for government to think again on the competitive environment. This coupled with the fact that there are terminal operators that see the Australian market as interesting and wish to break into it may result in the introduction of what can be termed a “third force”.<\/p>\n
The situation promises to be an interesting one to monitor over the next few months, not least from the standpoint of reviewing how government, and notably state governments and port corporations, go about facilitating real competition.<\/p>\n
This is also a big issue now in Argentina – as articles in this issue make clear. The central problem here, according to such eminent bodies as the Argentine Chamber of Shipping and the Association of Private Port Operators, is that government simply doesn’t have a strong enough focus on matters maritime. In effect, shipping is the poor relation and as result the infrastructure and superstructure supporting foreign trade is already creaking in certain areas and other problems are looming.<\/p>\n
Patrick Campbell, secretary of the Argentine Chamber of Shipping summarises the irony of the situation regarding the perceived lack of interest on the part of government in developing the country’s maritime resource base.”Our geographical position at the foot of South America locates us a long way away from many of our major foreign markets.Given this, it is quite ridiculous that there is no political will on the part of government to ensure our shipping infrastructure is developed in a timely and efficient manner.The reality is that we are losing ground to competition in Montevideo and Rio Grande, and if nothing is done the Port of Buenos Aires may have to face up to the reality of becoming a secondary port.”<\/p>\n
There is no template by which governments can create the most competitive environment for port and shipping operations;it inevitably boils down to trial and error. But whatever the solution it has to be preceded by the political will to bring about positive change.<\/p>\n
Carly Fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Promoting competition in port activities seems a simple enough concept for government to handle,but theory does not always go into practice easily.<\/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":[54],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","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=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}