The Black Sea ports represent an interesting case in view of the types, governance models and environment in which they operate and develop. The majority of Black Sea ports (Ukrainian, Russian, and Georgian) experienced tremendous economic and institutional changes in the last 20 years, from being Soviet centralized ports benefiting from public shelter policies to ports belonging to different autonomous countries and facing a new market economic reality based on efficiency and the effects of demand/supply (im)balance. The other Black Sea ports of Romania and Bulgaria were exposed to the termination of the Soviet influence in the early 1990s and a stepwise transformation from Socialist states to full EU Member States. Moreover, globalization processes, structural changes in logistics and distribution networks, as well as fierce competition among ports in the Black Sea basin affected their development path.
PortEconomics co-director Theo Notteboom and Kateryna Grushevska (ITMMA-University of Antwerp) presented their latest study of the Black Sea ports during the the annual conference of the International Association of Maritime Economists – IAME 2014, that was held in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. The study titled An Economic and Institutional Analysis of Multi-Port Gateway Regions in the Black Sea Basin aims to characterize the spatial dynamics of container ports of the Black Sea multi-port gateway regions by testing the validity of established spatial models on port system development. Furthermore, the expected future evolution path for port hierarchy in the Black Sea basin is discussed, taking into account expected or desired institutional changes, the strategies and objectives of market players and public stakeholders and the impact of port and terminal development plans on port competition and the demand/supply balance. By doing so, the study assesses to what extent the Black Sea port region is following an ‘expected’ development path as portrayed in a number of port system development models, or alternatively, can be characterized as an atypical port system following its own development logic.
You may freely download the paper @PortEconomics.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.