It can slow down proposed reforms for years. It can keep entrenched interests in place and provide them with a myriad of weapons that enable them to fight positive change.<\/p>\n
This is not, however, to deride the World Bank\u2019s efforts; the World Bank\u2019s transport divisions play a very useful role but sometimes they can be just a tad bureaucratic. Indeed, it has to be said that the World Bank itself spends a lot of effort on dragging parties to the \u201caltar of change\u201d and, figuratively speaking, saying \u201csign here”.<\/p>\n
Where corruption is manifest then obviously there are big incentives for certain parties to fight change and offer up a thousand ideas why, for instance, it is appropriate to retain the involvement of a given port authority in port operations. The few benefit, the majority lose out.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in this process, however, it becomes painstakingly self-evident that there has to be change \u2013 reforms become essential. Melt-down has to be avoided. At this point, when, for example, a port has to dredge to accommodate larger vessel sizes, it has exhausted its cargo handling capacity in key areas, port users are frustrated, it is not properly addressing road and rail connections into the hinterland and has had a plethora of studies undertaken in recent years as to how it should march into the future then it is a time to act and not to dither.<\/p>\n
It is in this context that the World Bank usually can only play a limited role \u2013 a role based on recommendations. Ultimately, the government agencies or port authority concerned have to decide. What is notable, today, however, with the World Bank\u2019s ports division in particular is that it is much more focused on empowering itself with the right information with which to back up recommendations and decisions. As such, it can exert greater pressure for change. <\/p>\n
There are still certain problems \u2013 too much theory cast upon on the ground reports \u2013 but overall it is a big step in the right direction.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you go the World Bank route then invariably arriving at a conclusion about what type of port reforms to adopt will prove a long drawn out process based on a myriad of studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-strategist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8187,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions\/8187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8185"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}