Restructuring Port Governance in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s (SA) ports do not have a clearly defined port doctrine. They have certain elements resembling the Anglo-Saxon port doctrine, others the Continental doctrine and still others the Asian port doctrine. Thus, SA encounters conflicting port objectives: it runs a complementary ports system where costs are not reflective of prices charged, and the revenues and costs allocated to various commodity types remain unjustified. This is against the backdrop of intra-port, inter-port and multimodal cross-subsidisation, which found justification in SA’s developmental objectives but has been viewed as unjustifiable under current economic conditions, giving rise to dissatisfaction among various port stakeholders regarding Transnet as a state-owned enterprise and Transnet National Ports Authority’s (TNPA) governance and pricing practices that have not been adequately addressed. Using content analysis, 18 stakeholders’ submissions on the 2013-2014 TNPA tariff application, 15 stakeholders’ submissions regarding the multi-year tariff application, and 16 submissions regarding the 2014-2015 tariff application were assessed. The focus was on finding links between challenges faced by stakeholders and whether solutions would be found through SA adopting a different port doctrine. The findings show that while the Asian doctrine is more aligned with SA’s developmental objectives, adoption of it may prove premature in view of the current and foreseeable economic conditions. The study shows that the local port system may not find a perfect fit into any of the known port models and established port doctrines, but, instead, that SA needs to articulate its own port doctrine.

South Africa’s port doctrine: dilemmas and the way forward

“…These core design principles are said to help support the tariff structure with 'sound design principles, a more balanced and equitable distribution of charges to various port user groups, the need to support government policies through the tariff structure, as well as being strongly aligned with international norms and standards' (TNPA, 2012: p. 8). Notwithstanding what TNPA says concerning its port pricing structure, Meyiwa and Chasomeris (2016) demonstrate that the port authority falls short of its own aforementioned principles. For example, charging uniform tariffs for ports that differ in structure, commodities handled and markets served is in conflict with the cost-based and user-pays principles.…”

“…Previous studies by Gumede and Chasomeris (2015) and Meyiwa and Chasomeris (2016) have used content analysis to analyse port stakeholders' comments regarding South Africa's port doctrine up to the 2014/2015 review period. Likewise, this study uses content analysis of 137 stakeholder submissions to the Ports Regulator over 9 years, from fiscal years 2009/2010 to 2018/2019.…”

Framework for Dealing with Uncertainty in the Port Planning Process

“…However, in these studies, the level of engagement and changes in the stakeholders' attributes and salience during the projected lifetime of a project were not discussed. Meyiwa and Chasomeris (2016) looked at the adoption of different port doctrines to find challenges faced by stakeholders in the South African Ports. They applied a qualitative technique called content analysis, based on existing documents and interviews, to assess the salience of various stakeholders in terms of year-to-year submissions of tariff applications.…”

An Economic Development Policy Implementation Approach to Creation of Sustainable Maritime SMMEs in the KwaZulu-Natal Province

“…There is a disparity between South Africa's fleet and the country's exports, and this has always been a problem (Mthembu & Williams, 2019;Swart, 2016). The lack of clearly defined policy objectives and coordinated approach for ports in South Africa, has led to inter-port competition, instead of complementary port system in KZN and the country's ports (Meyiwa & Chasomeris, 2016). Chang, Shin, and Lee (2014) estimates that South Africa's economy would lose at least R3.215 billion (direct and indirect losses) if ports were not used.…”