The competitiveness of ports has received its fair share of
attention in the scientific literature, perhaps more than many other sectors of
the economy. This, because the crucial role of ports as the indispensable nodes
in fiercely competing global supply chains is becoming increasingly felt by
policymakers.
Factors determining the competitiveness of ports are many,
but their importance is weighed differently by different stakeholders. This is
normal in piecemeal assessments, which often resemble the time-honored fable of the blind men trying
to assess an elephant. For instance, (port) costs may not be ‘declared’ of
equal importance by all stakeholders, with some of them opting for higher
efficiency in port operations, or better access to foreign markets
(connectivity and centrality arguments), or a better hinterland access. At the
end of the day, however, everyone’s interest is to minimize their costs, may
this be achieved from higher operational efficiency, access to markets or from
any of the above.
In the absence of a systems approach, or structural modelling, in the literature of
port competitiveness (a project we are currently working on), the ranking of
paired-comparisons attempted in the full article through the Fuzzy Analytic
Hierarchy Process (FAHP) methodology takes us half way to our final objective.
There is another objective here, however, summarized in the paper’s implicit
questions: Are the criteria used by carriers in selecting a port of call the
same as those valued as important by the ports themselves? Do the two actors,
shipowners and ports, understand each other well? What is the value of a better
‘understanding’? Would shipowners look at the larger picture (generalized
costs), over and above their preoccupation with port efficiency? And would
ports understand that their good fortune of having a
prime port location should not allow them to rest on their laurels, but understand that more
needs to be done to attract the ship? As said, our questions are implicit and
so are their answers. But by showing that ports and carriers do not always see
eye to eye, we have covered a lot of ground towards helping them to eventually
start thinking alike.
HH