| Abstract [eng] |
In the process of international trade maritime transport is one of the most important types of transport in the chain of global trade. Nearly two-thirds of global trade freights are shipped by the sea lane, more than 130 countries around the world develop national and/or international trade by vessels. The importance of stevedoring business development has particularly increased over the past decade. It has become very important for ports to improve the quality of their service, to introduce the latest technologies and innovations, so they would become competitive in regard to other ports. Competitiveness has become one of the most important motives, encouraging ports to expand and improve. In ports activity it is important not only whether they are physically capable of handling the flow of freights, but also the potential competitiveness regarding freights. Methods, provided in the scientific literature, allow to evaluate only the efficiency of ports technical performance, without fully evaluating the financial aspect of ports performance, e.g. competitiveness component. For this reason, it is purposeful to create a model of competitiveness evaluation of ports performance, which would allow to evaluate the competitiveness of a seaport, as an economical unit, in the context of financial indicators. Objective of the paper – to evaluate the competitiveness of Klaipėda State Seaport in regard to the closest competitors. Tasks raised in order to achieve the objective: to identify the internal factors of the seaport competitiveness and their evaluation methods; to identify the features of evaluation methods and application possibilities for the seaport environment influence on business; to establish a model for competitiveness evaluation of the seaport performance and to identify the criteria of competitiveness evaluation; to carry out the analysis of Klaipėda seaport competitiveness according to exclusive indicators. The analysis of scientific literature has revealed that the process of competitiveness evaluation is susceptible to time, financial and often to human resources. Not only the accuracy, value of evaluation results directly depend on particularity of methodology and degree of elaboration, but also the complexity of evaluation process, costs of methodology adaptation and expediency. The main theoretical and methodological problems, arising in the process of competitiveness evaluation, are solid and evident – the multiplicity of competitiveness concept and restrictions arising from evaluation methods. On a practical level, we have to deal with the lack of time and financial resources, and restrictions arising from information accessibility. The model of competitiveness evaluation for the seaport competitiveness evaluation is established, which focuses on efficiency of the port performance (loading extent, freights structure and port specialization, investment expediency) and environmental impact, where the port is located. The same comparative factor of the evaluation is assigned to each evaluative field of competitiveness in determining the port's competitiveness. The quantitative evaluation is employed for financial indicators of the organization and for indicators of internal and external communication, the ability to change is evaluated by the methods of qualitative evaluation. In summary of the results of the competitiveness evaluation of Klaipėda State Seaport in regard to the closest competitors, they were normalized by the method of average distance from the group by assigning the same factor to all groups of competitiveness elements. After analyzing the competitiveness of the seaports in the Baltic States, the conclusion can be made that Tallinn seaport gained the highest competitiveness score, second is Klaipėda port and third – Riga port. The competitiveness evaluation in different evaluative fields has revealed that Klaipėda seaport gained the highest score in the evaluative field of internal communication factors by evaluating the investments to port infrastructure and the price of labour, however it gained the lowest score in the evaluation of labour productivity, meanwhile the evaluation of external communication factors does not show a huge competitiveness gap of neither of analyzed ports, it should be noticed though, that Klaipėda port gained the highest score in the evaluation of internal demand. In order to strengthen the competitiveness of Klaipėda State Seaport, it is recommended to start with finding ways how to increase performance productivity, to ensure the continuity of investment process by modernizing infrastructure, which significantly increases the flow of freights in the port, to evaluate the alternative solutions for preservation of performance profitability level, considering the possible increase in labour costs. |
