World port's competition and regulation; evaluation of container terminals in Marmara region

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................Ports become to be huge competition arenas because of being most important economicalstructures for international trade and commerce activities. Governments need to provide portregulations to develop port sector activities. In order to get optimum efficiency to the ports,port authorities must have the strategies to give complete services through their facilities suchas cargo handling, storing, tariff fillings, for obtaining high berth utilization withoutcongestion and no ships in the queue waiting for berths.Analysing many exemples of developped or developping world container ports , in this study,we examined public or private sector's container terminals in the Marmara Region that has amajor role in Turkish economy. Berth utilization ratio of terminals were calculated by usinginformation and statistical documents received from port authorities. Competitivenessindicators were determined by evaluating operational environment of terminals, transportoptions for each terminal and port profitability. The decision framework used to select portcompetition enhancement structural and regulatory remedies published by World Bank.Keywords: Ports, maritime transport, port competition, port?s regulation, container terminals,berth utilization.