Roadmap to port competitiveness

That is the key message from a collaboration between the International Association of Ports and Harbors and the World Bank in its ‘Close the Gaps – A global roadmap to raise port competitiveness’ initiative.

Eight online workshops have taken place over the last year involving 85 senior port executives and other key stakeholders to facilitate closer working between shipping companies and ports to help overcome the challenges of the future.

“There is clearly a difference between what the shipping industry can do and what the ports can do,” IAPH director, Patrick Verhoeven, told the audience at a recent IAPH Conference session on port competitiveness.

“Investment in ports is a complicated matter, the lead time to create new infrastructure is much longer than on the shipping side, planning is much more complicated, environmental permits, the whole thing.”

Key challenges

The overarching themes from the workshops were climate change and digitalisation.

“Climate change is driving the decarbonisation of the maritime sector, it’s driving the need to introduce resilience from an adaptation and mitigation perspective, it requires ports to think about investments in order to introduce that,” said Martin Humphreys, Lead Transport Economist and Global Lead – Transport Connectivity and Regional Integration at the World Bank.

Whilst there is no longer any doubt that climate change is the key challenge facing the industry, regional differences play a huge part in whether or not a port focuses on decarbonisation. “In some parts of the world there may be more urgent issues and we see that reflected at government level.

“When we look at the debate in the IMO we have a divide, not that people deny there is an issue, but they say that some parts of the world have contributed more to the emissions problem. If we’re going to introduce a markets-based measure there will be a cost to us. That’s not equitable.”

“Green corridors are great but shouldn’t become something competitive. We need to develop a network in which all ports can play a role. Someone needs to bring coherence but I’m not sure who that is, whether that’s the IMO or another body,” he added.

That digitalisation is needed is acknowledged across every region but the key challenge is in encouraging the public and private sectors to be transparent and share data and for there to be cooperation between the shipping companies and port authorities on global standards.

“We don’t really see that happening yet,” said Martin Humphreys.

Where next?

The World Bank is continuing its digitalisation work in partnership with the IAPH and others for countries who have requested support. Regarding decarbonisation there is ongoing work on green fuels as well as looking at suitable production and bunker sites.

The IAPH and World Bank are also working on creating a Port Improvement and Reform Toolkit which will include modules dedicated to each of these challenges along with topics such as resilience, the port/city interface and hinterland connectivity.