Economic importance of the Flemish maritime ports: Report 2002

Maritime traffic: total of all the cargo loadings and unloadings which take place in a port during a given period oftime. These figures are used to classify ports by size (cf. chapter 1).2 Maritime transportMaritime transport economics, which forms the focus of this study, is an area of transport economics cutting acrosstwo disciplines, namely economics and civil engineering. Transport economics is different from other fields ofeconomic science in that it considers the activities' spatial dimensions, which represent a cost. This cost is linked asmuch to the structure of the networks that the producers and consumers use, as it is to the supply and demandprofile for a given good.Transport costs vary, depending on the regions of the world and the requirements in terms of speed (e.g.: leanproduction, just-in-time, etc.). The economic problems associated with transport are thus complex and are a majorfactor for a great number of players: vehicle designers, energy producers, government, etc. Furthermore, atEuropean level, motorways, railways and waterways are developed in order to increasingly satisfy the need forstructural development in the least advanced regions. Policies are therefore long-term in nature.Mathematical models for maritime activity have been developed, including that of « ship market modelling », whichenables the supply and demand pattern in the particular case of maritime traffic, to be applied 85 .In view of the fact that there is often no alternative to ocean-going transport, the supply and demand equation formaritime transport follows the equation below:DD t = f (CT t,AH t)SS t = f (MF t,P t)whereDD = demand for seaborne transport (expressed in tonnes x km);CT = tonnes of cargo transported in time period;AH = average haul of cargo (in km)SS = supply of seaborne transport (in tonnes of cargo x km);P = ship productivity (in tonnes of cargo x km / dwt / annum);MF = merchant fleet (in dwt);t = year subscriptDemand, measured in tonnes x km, is defined by the tonnage of cargo to be transported and the distance to becovered per tonne. Supply of transport capacity, measured in the same units, is determined by the capacity of themerchant fleet according to the ships' maximum capacity and the performance of the fleet, i.e. the average tonnagemultiplied by the average annual distance covered, taking account of the ships' maximum capacity.Maritime ports provide the only interface between land and sea. The majority of cargo activities are carried out inthe ports, as dictated by loading and unloading operations.85Martin Stopford, « Maritime Economics », Routledge (1997), pp. 515- 516. The units used in that book are: tons and miles.NBB WORKING PAPER No. 56 - JUNE 2004 117