Choice Factors of Transshipment Port in Northeast Asia

In order to attract more transshipment cargoes, Busan Port Authority (BPA) has, since 2003, adopted the volume incentive policy by which more than US$ 10 million annually have been paid back to shipping lines that were called at the port. However, having been a transshipment port for the Northeast region of China, the port of Busan has come under threat from bold Chinese port development projects, notably Shanghai, as northern Chinese regionnl ports place more emphasis on building facilities capable of handling growing trade volumes. Undoubtedly this would lead to a decline in transshipment container traffic moved via Busan. The purpose of this paper is to identify some core factors that have been affecting the increase of transshipment cargoes of Busan and further to recommend BPA an improved incentive scheme with which more T/S cargoes can be attracted into the port of Busan To clarity the reason why T/S cargoes have increased in the port of Busan, several steps are made as follows: The first step is to make a quantitative model for explaining the development of T/S cargoes during the last decade. The second step is to define the dependent and the independent variables for multiple regressions after testing variable significance. For this, data collection and the accuracy of validation have been done by the direct interview with the experienced staffs in shipping companies of both domestic and foreign country. After validating the model with collected data, the final step is to find variables which are explaining the model mostly. In conclusion, 2 variables were clearly identified as core factors that explain well the development of T/S cargoes in the port of Busan: 'Mohring effect' and total cost. It is strongly recommended, by an empirical study, that an incentive scheme be changed to a way which more feeder vessels rather than mother vessels can reduce their direct costs to call in the port of Busan.