2018-08-27

Strategy for years

Polish maritime ports need a consistent and balanced strategy for future decades, which should take into account a co-existence of them all, showing a way to meet the national demands and demands of foreign trade and how to make use of the economic situation for the sake of transit cargoes handling. Business plans arising from this strategy would be a good tool to obtain governmental financing together with European funds and private investors. This is why the port business circles asks for joint, based on partnership principles, development of such a strategy for maritime ports until 2050. Its active creators should be both the Ministry of Marine Economy and Inland Navigation and management boards of particular ports, maritime institutions of higher education, co-investors and port operators. Strategy for Polish ports, the development of which was a called for during last year’s panel.

According to Krzysztof Szymborski, the President of BCT Gdynia, development of strategy for ports should commence from demand analysis concerning transshipment services, with the well-known division into groups of commodities, on the basis of Polish foreign trade and expected transit cargoes. Such an analysis should be performed from various points of view, for example geography of foreign trade, separation of inter-EU trade exchange from continental flows – which is significant for required tailings and navigational parameters of ports - and appropriate equipment of terminals, future and current fleet trends, sizes of ships and their propulsion.

The next step could be a stocktaking of current and currently implemented projects, which increase the transshipment capacity of ports and their terminals. It shall recreate a method of demand analysis (cargoes, quantities, trade geography, ship parameters and their needs). A key matter in such a case would be a public and private partnership. Not only the financing model, but – even when it comes to purely governmental projects - the manner of strategy development, with the participation of all partners, so also Polish oceanic offices of water transport giants and smaller shipowners, investors already employed at ports, advices of port stakeholders, organisations of maritime forwarding and logistics, road and railway carriers and operators. port managers with cities and towns, where they are to be located, of course coordinated by the Ministry of Marine Economy and Inland Navigation. Strategy, as an agreement of partners concerning their development and the future of ports, must be co-signed by relevant ministries building roads and railway tracks, ministries for labour, finance, digitisation and other. Such co-signing should guarantee sufficient access to roads, railway tracks or boats (in connection with rivers), adjustment of capital, design, executive and human resources to achieve goals.

This strategy also contains a part devoted to environmental protection, access to employees (automated or traditional terminal) and future of digitisation in port environment. Not only Port Community System, but also Polskie Porty 4.0 [Polish Ports 4.0]. Transparent concession policy and obligatory reinvestment of profits into infrastructure supporting port development are important elements of law on ports.

The development of Polish maritime ports will be one of the topics of the Maritime Economy Forum Gdynia 2018.

Article developed in cooperation with "Namiary na Morze i Handel" magazine.

Phot. Namiary na Morze i handel