تجزیه و تحلیل اقتصادی از اصلاح بخش نظام بندر اسپانیایی در طول 1990s

In the matter of port legislation, the nineties was a period of maximum interest in Spain. Two laws enacted in 1992 and 1997, respectively, aimed at increasing the autonomy of individual ports in the management and organization of its activities. Before 1992 two different models of management coexisted in the Spanish port system: autonomous decision-making ports and ports controlled in its decision-making by the Central Government. The question we address in this paper is how these legislative changes have affected the evolution of the levels of traffic of the Spanish port system from 1992, date of introduction of the first law, to 2003, date of approval of a third legislative change that remains out of this analysis for lack of sufficient data. We find an important impact of legislative changes on port traffic by way of an estimated econometric model over the 1966–2003 period. We control for the effect of other variables that might have influenced Spanish maritime traffic such as international maritime flows, taken as a proxy of globalization, or gross domestic product, under the hypothesis that maritime transport is a demand derived of economic activity. We provide evidence supporting that greater port autonomy had beneficial effects for the Spanish port system as a whole.

There is abundant literature on the important role played by transportation methods in the economic globalization process (Hesse and Rodrigue, 2004, Janelle and Beuthe, 1997 and Veen-Groot and Nijkamp, 1999) and, in particular, on the expansion of maritime transportation (Alderton and Winchester, 2002) and the new roles of seaports (Rodrigue, 1999 and Bichou and Gray, 2005). Thus, for Bichou and Gray (2005) seaports should be evaluated on the basis of their contribution to the competitiveness of the complete distribution/provisioning channel to which they are connected. This new context has forced many countries to adapt their port-related legal framework in order to give ports more flexibility in all aspects related to their daily management and their commercial strategies with a view to capture new routes and customers in an attempt to expand their hinterland and foreland. According to Debrie et al. (2007), the conventional taxonomy of port institutional models, as regards the degree of public sector ownership, administration and labor affiliation would be the following: “service”, “tool”, “land lord” and “private”. Nevertheless it is not rare to find hybrid institutional models that combine features of several types (Bichou and Gray, 2005). Public sector ports can be further classified depending on the degree of centralization of the administration which oversees the port (local, regional or central) and to the degree of the port’s decision-making autonomy. Mediterranean port systems within Europe have traditionally been quite centralized. Most have been run by public management with little autonomy of port authorities. Unsurprisingly, they have engaged into considerable legal reforms during the 1990s. The following analyses are worth mentioning: Gardner et al., 2006 and Perez-Labajos and Blanco, 2004 on the evolution of European maritime and port policy; Ridolfi (1995) on the Italian case; Pallis and Syriopoulos (2007) on the Greek case; Yercan (1998) on Turkey; Debrie et al. (2007) on the French case; Carvalho and Marques (2007) on the Portuguese case or Coto Millan (1997) and Suárez de Vivero and Rodrı´guez Mateos (2002) for a descriptive analysis of the 1992 Spanish reform. The 90s were a very interesting period in Spain regarding port legislation. Both Law 27/1992 of National Ports and Commercial Maritime Lines and its 1997 update (Law 62/1997) produced changes in the management and organization of the old “Juntas del Puerto” (Port Assemblies) and in the various regional government administrations. Before 1992, the Spanish port system was asymmetric with two coexisting management models: on the one hand, the four “Autonomous Ports” (Barcelona, Bilbao, Huelva and Valencia), and on the other hand the remaining ports, managed by “Juntas del Puerto” and with a centralized decision-making regime. Law 27/92 sought to adapt the ports to a highly competitive environment. To do that, it favored the self financing of Port Authorities, increasing their autonomy. Thus ports had more flexibility to conduct their relations to the port community of their hinterland. There was a transition from a public system based on strictly administrative criteria to a commercial understanding of port services. Law 27/1992 created the so-called “Ente Público Puertos del Estado” (State-owned Enterprise of National Ports) with the mandate of coordinating the operation of national ports. In case one particular port within the national port system would experience difficulties with the transition period to the new port system, the “Ente Público Puertos del Estado” would transfer funds (from the “Fondo de Financiación”) from national ports experiencing operating surpluses to those experiencing hardships. In practical terms the transition to the new port system was relatively smooth, and the special funds were only needed in a very few cases, for example the ports in the north of Africa (Ceuta and Melilla). All in all, Law 27/1992 moved the Spanish port institutional model from a “service”-type to the current “land lord” system. Services provided directly by the public sector (pilotage, towage, stowage, storage…) before the enactment of the law started to be managed by the private sector, while before Law 27/92 the private sector operators were mere intermediaries between Port Authorities (“Autoridades Portuarias”) and firms demanding port services. Along these lines, the Law sought the replacement of workers with civil servant status by private sector workers. The 1992 model was modified by the 1997 law that increased the participation of Regional Governments in port operation and management. With this modification Regional Governments could name members of a Port Authority governing board including its President. The transfer of authority from the Central Government to the Regional Governments was complete.1 In addition, after this legal reform of 1997 the state-owned company “Ente Público Puertos del Estado” gained autonomy from the Ministerio de Fomento (Spain’s Public Works Ministry). As a consequence of these and other events, one can say that a new port management model was born in Spain after these reforms. The question we want to address is how these legal changes have impacted on the evolution of maritime traffic levels in the Spanish port system from 1992, enactment of the first law, to 2003, approval of a third legal reform2 which we leave out of the analysis due to lack of enough data. Our sample covers the period 1966–2003 (annual data). The paper goes beyond a simple descriptive viewpoint of the legal changes in the Spanish port system by trying to evaluate the quantitative contribution of these reforms to maritime traffic growth. We estimate an econometric model to account for the quantitative impact of the reforms.3 Compared to alternative approaches, like the ones related to the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), our approach presents three main advantages. Firstly, it allows us to carry out a dynamic analysis that exploits the time series structure of the series of port traffics (versus alternatives following a comparative static approach). Secondly, we take an agnostic approach insofar as we do not need to establish assumptions on the nature of the production function of the ports. Finally, to avoid spurious effects we can easily control for variables that might have influenced Spanish maritime traffic in the analyzed time period, such as the continuing growth of international maritime traffic (globalization), or gross domestic product, under the hypothesis that maritime transport is a demand derived of economic activity. We follow a stepwise approach. First we apply our methodology to the series of total traffic of the Spanish port sector. Next we distinguish between two groups of ports, grouped according to the degree of autonomy they had at the time Law 27/1992 entered into force (due to the existence of a number of ports with a high degree of management autonomy). Finally, we analyse the impact of the legal changes using a panel of the 27 Spanish port authorities.4 In all cases, this study shows that granting greater autonomy to port authorities has been a reasonable strategy for the Spanish port system. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 lays out the econometric methodology, Section 3 the empirical results, and Section 4 presents the conclusions of the study.

This study shows by means of an econometric model that granting greater autonomy to port authorities has been a reasonable strategy for the Spanish port system. It provides empirical evidence in favor of management and decision-making decentralization for strongly centralized port systems, such as was the Spanish one. Our results show that the enacted legislative changes would help explaining some 35% of the total growth in the Spanish port traffic on average over the period 1993–2003, i.e. without the legal reforms the Spanish port system would have grown at a much lower pace over this period. In the decade of the 1980s the “service” model seemed to need a reform. Over the 1980s the Spanish port system reached a bottom after having followed a strong deceleration path (Fig. 1, panel B), with annual growth rates stabilised at around 2%. In addition, since 1985, the growth rate of the Spanish maritime traffic was below the growth rate of global maritime traffic. The 1990s reverse this poor record, with growth rates of total maritime traffic almost doubling compared to the previous decade. In addition, Spanish port traffic series started to grow above world maritime traffic rates. The legal reforms of the 1990s were not strangers to this process. Our results show that the Law enacted in 1992 implied a quite steep change (we estimated a change in trend, summarised in the ramp specification) as the port system changed from a quite centralised and bureaucratic system (“service” system) to one with greater participation of the private sector (“landlord”). In sum, a priori our work could serve to support decentralization processes in port systems similar to the Spanish one, in particular for some Mediterranean countries. Our results show that the positive effects of the increased autonomy of ports brought about by Law 27/1992 were immediate, taking place already in 1993. Nevertheless Port Authorities needed time to fully profit from the new legal framework, that is, they climbed a ramp (local trend) as they learned to take advantage from their newly acquired autonomy. The fast learning process was most likely influenced by the quick replacement of workers with civil servant status by highly skilled private sector workers. Another interesting conclusion is that, even in asymmetric situations, as it was the case of the Spanish port system before 1992 (in which only four large ports – the autonomous ones – had managing autonomy), a global autonomy policy would benefit all ports. Furthermore, after the legal reforms, profit distribution has been especially generous with ports which already had autonomy in the past. Our results show that the impact of the legal changes was more important in the case of autonomous ports than in the case of non-autonomous ports. In particular, our results show that while autonomous ports owed some 60% of its total growth on average over the period 1993–2003 to the enacted legislative changes, non-autonomous ports (ports with more limited autonomy before 1992) only owed 27% of their overall growth. Several reasons, among others, could explain this result. Firstly, the pre-1992 experience accumulated by autonomous ports managing their autonomy might have helped them take greater advantage of the new legal framework. This legal framework has fostered greater intra-port and inter-port competition within the Spanish system and discouraged commercial policies based only on wide captive hinterlands. Secondly, three of the so-called autonomous ports (Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia) have tried, with varying success, to develop a role of hub for container traffic, with feeder lines for other Spanish ports. Therefore their greater growth is partly due to their ability to add spoke port growth to their own. The results show that nine ports have been the main beneficiaries of the legal reforms, i.e. one third of the total. The positive impact was not only in the case of large ports (5 out of 9 were in 2003 within the 10 larger ports, but 3 out of 9 were in the group of 10 smaller ports) but rather to their geographical location. Mediterranean ports seemed to be favoured, and within this group Valencia, Castellón and Alicante. Nevertheless, the main result arising from a deep look at the panel results is that we find evidence for a positive relationship between ports taking advantage of the new laws and the specialisation of those ports in container traffic. Five out of the nine ports with a significant impact of the legal reforms were within the group of 10 ports with the highest number of TEUs, and the rest ranked 11th, 14th and 17th (out of 27 ports in the sample).