Growth of trade and economic cooperation on a large scale between Korea and ASEAN nations has seen a recent rise in the maritime logistics industry, leading Hyundai Merchant Marine and Hanjin Shipping to increase shipping routes between these areas. In addition, the Korean government started promoting national strategies to increase the influence on the emerging market by connecting Official Development Assistance(ODA) for maritime transport, port and global logistics parts with policies to support Korea logistics companies’ investment. ODA policy was expected to be an effective effort to support the overseas investment of maritime-related business.
Although there were well-developed ports in the ASEAN region such as Singapore port(Singapore) and Tanjung Pelepas port(Malaysia) in terms of the facilities, the ports remained ill-equipped to meet the challenges of handling increased cargo traffic in this area because most of the ASEAN nations are developing countries. In order to improve the overall ASEAN maritime transport network, each port’s efficiency was a crucial factor that should be calculated periodically. By increasing the efficiency of their ports, ASEAN nations should have expected not only the advancement of the port industry itself but also the emergence of related industries. These port related industries generate the employment and income by inducting direct investment to the port and adjacent area. In this regard, it could have a positive impact on the development of a nation's as well a direct and indirect economic inpacts.
This study evaluated the efficiency of port operations in the 32 ports belonging to 9 ASEAN nations through the use of Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA).
Using the DEA-CCR model, efficiency ranking was found that 4 out of 32 ports in 2007, 3 in 2008, 2 in 2009, and 2 in 2010 were measured as efficient ports. Meanwhile, the results of DEA-BCC model was found that 11 out of 32 ports in 2007, 11 in 2008, 13 in 2009, and 12 in 2010 are efficient.
This study yielded two major findings.
First, the ports assessed as inefficient need to benchmark similar ports in size and structure from the ports that are assessed as efficient to improve the efficiency.
Secondly, these results could be used to determine potential candidates and country for an international port development cooperation program with Korea to improve the performance of the entire ASEAN port network by developing the infrastructures of ill-equipped ports.
This study should be considered be useful for private logistics companies in Korea that are struggling to find oversea market for new opportunity.