Future Challenges for the Port and Shipping Sector by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Informa Law
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

6 The Future Look of PAs

What PAs will look like in the future is obviously anybody’s guess. But futurologists tend to have a strong impact on the definition of the visions needed to discuss reform or business strategies.

From the discussion so far, it seems clear that global changes will force PAs to be more technologically driven and supportive of increased standardisation of technical and administrative processes. It is very likely that the efficient PAs of tomorrow will also have to have much more focused (and hence narrow) policy and strategic responsibilities. They will, however, have a much broader role as facilitators of inter-modal co-ordination and of logistics integration.

To do this, they will have to be much more integrated into regional (national or supranational) ports. Many countries may simply decide to integrate the PAs into regional transport agencies, simply to ensure that inter-modality is much better internalised in policy decisions than it currently is currently the case in many countries.

PAs, within transport agencies and independently, will have a mandate to support multiple ports within a region or across a port range. Effective space management will become an essential dimension of the effective management of traffic in an environment in which local land scarcity and transaction costs are likely to be the two major catalysts of increased travel costs for people and good. The politics of this evolution are not going to be easy. Port competition is often driven by inter-country competition (e.g., the Le Havre–Hamburg range or the Buenos-Aires–Sao Paulo range). Within countries, competition is often also fierce across ports (e.g., in Spain or Brazil). Getting ports to co-operate will indeed be a major challenge for the new PAs. However, it can be done (e.g., witness Hong-Kong and Southern China).16

16 Song (2003). PAs should indeed have a very important role in managing the transaction costs associated with security and in deciding how this will influence the degree and type of specialisation. Security clearance is likely to be one of the drivers of port specialisation within port ranges or regions, since a spatial unbundling-cum-specialisation of security may emerge as a solution to the high time costs imposed by these concerns.

The new PAs should also cost the users more and the taxpayers less, hence they should hence enjoy more financial autonomy. The degree of this autonomy will be driven by the size of the markets they can generate. In many instances, markets sizes will be larger because PAs will have regional mandates over a port range rather than over a single port.

The situation will, of course, often be different in countries with single ports, particularly the poorest countries or small islands. Here the market size and nature may be too narrow to allow specialisation. In some cases, financial autonomy may be harder to achieve and taxpayers’ money may continue to be significant.

Finally, in the future, PAs will have to be much more accountable to both direct and indirect users (on management and costs) and taxpayers (on costs and subsidies).17 Although the costs associated

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