The Study On Port Privatization: Theory And Policy

The port industry is the strategic infrastructure of national economy and the important part of the reform of natural monopoly industry. It's necessary to study the privatization of port industry. After 1970's, the tide of deregulation and privatization appeared worldwide, especially in the transport industry. As for port industry, the step of reform was rapid and private sector plays a more active role. This paper applied the theory of modern economics to examine the port industry which has special economic characters.The traditional views on port industry make it's development was accompanied by public operation and strict regulation, but this model created many kinds of government failures which means the high costs and low efficiency of port services. The changes of it's characters such as the weakness of the natural monopoly feature are the main causes of port privatization in the world. The objectives of reform are to improve the efficiency and service quality, loose the fiscal burden. Under the circumstances of liberalism occupied the key position again, port privatization became trend worldwide. The participation of private sector could greatly improve the incentive mechanism and efficiency of port enterprises. The rapid growth of port service demand and the fiscal pressure of government have to turn to institution innovations to find it's way out. Based on the review of the changes of port system, this paper analyzed the theory foundation and reform models, and then studied international experiences. The performance of port industry is mainly determined by property rights, competition and regulation, and in the mean time these above factors have mutual effects. So this paper studied the problem of port performance under a multi-dimension framework and pointed out the relations and coordination among these factors. Based on the classification of the different part of port sector, this paper raised the basic model of regulation reform to support the implement of port privatization, which is maintain the implicit regulation and introduce access pricing regulation in the natural monopoly link, deregulation and enhance competition in the competitive link, and introduce incentive regulation in the intermediate area. Finally this paper described the development and features of the privatization of China's port industry, pointed out the privatization direction and raised the regulation framework.