|
|
|
| Sunday, 14 August 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Trade link between nations
In some cases this meant that the coastline at that point provided a sheltered anchorage. Other ports were located near the mouths of rivers, enabling river and sea traffic to meet. Others are to be found on straits between landmasses - or where major trade routes pass. These advantages resulted in many ports becoming major cities. The convergence of land and sea trade encouraged the growth of industrial and commercial activities in the port, so that many ports became major economic and industrial centres. It has been calculated that more than 90 per cent of world trade, in tonnage terms, goes by ship. Despite the technical innovations that have transformed transport in the last two centuries, ships remain the most economical means of moving large quantities of goods from one place to another. They are cheaper to build and run than other forms of transport, such as road and railways, and they can carry huge amounts of cargo - some modern oil tankers can carry more than half a million tons of oil at a time. Don't you think it's amazing? Another reason for the continuing popularity of ships is that the producers of raw materials are often located far away from the main consumers and they are often separated by sea. The main oil-producing region of the world is located in the Middle East. Yet demand is greatest in North America, Europe and Japan, all situated many thousands of miles away. Ships are the best way of getting the product to markets in Europe and other parts of the world. During the last fifty years, however, ports have changed. As trade and industry grew, so the traditional city-centre ports became too small and congested to cope with demand. Ships grew in size and many ports were too small to accommodate the larger ships coming into service. Container ships, bulk carriers and oil tankers all demanded huge land areas for storing and handling cargoes. Inevitably, the demand for more land and deep water meant that ports had to be re-located further down river, often well away from the traditional centre. This encouraged and indeed necessitated the provision of new road and rail links. Container traffic has revolutionised not only the way ports operate but also the way they look. In each case, huge areas of land are required for container storage and for cargo handling equipment. Ports today have to be able to handle a wide variety of cargoes such as refrigerated fruit, general cargoes and containers. The only seaborne trade that has declined in the last fifty years has been in people. For many centuries, ships provided the only way for people to travel between continents. Passenger shipping boomed during the 19th century, when emigration from Europe to North America and other countries reached its peak. But the invention of the aircraft, and especially the development of jet aircraft, which dramatically reduced flying times and costs, meant that passenger shipping declined greatly from the 1950s onwards. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, the development of cruising as a recreation led to a new boom in passenger shipping. In tonnage terms, most seaborne trade consists of goods carried in bulk. Generally speaking, producers of bulk commodities are located many hundreds or thousands of miles from consumers and without ships it would be impossible to meet demand. It is difficult to rank ports to determine which ones are the "busiest" because you can consider many factors - the weight of the goods, the number of ships, or the number of containers moved. Most port associations rank ports according to volume and number of TEUs. TEU stands for "Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit;" containers are counted in 20-foot lengths. A twenty-foot container counts as one TEU while a forty-foot container counts as two TEUs. Many ports are located at transshipment or break-of-bulk points. The top container ports are in Southeast Asia, Northwest Europe, and the West Coast of the United States. These locations reflect the patterns of global trade between locations for production and consumption. Busiest Ports by volume 1. Singapore 2. Rotterdam, Netherlands 3. South Louisiana, U.S.A. 4. Shanghai, China 5. Hong Kong, China 6. Houston, U.S.A 7. Chiba, Japan 8. Nagoya, Japan 9. Ulsan, South Korea 10.Kwangyang, South Korea Busiest Ports by containers (TEUs) 1. Hong Kong, China 2. Singapore 3. Pusan, South Korea 4. Kaohsiung, Taiwan 5. Rotterdam, Netherlands 6. Shanghai, China 7. Los Angeles, U.S.A. 8. Long Beach, U.S.A. 9. Hamburg, Germany 10. Antwerp, Belgium ***** Maritime treaties Shipping is perhaps the most international of all the world's great industries and one of the most dangerous. It has always been recognized that the best way of improving safety at sea is by developing international regulations that are followed by all shipping nations, and from the mid-19th century onwards a number of such treaties were adopted. Several countries proposed that a permanent international body should be established to promote maritime safety more effectively, but it was not until the establishment of the United Nations itself that these hopes were realized. In 1948 an international conference in Geneva adopted a convention formally establishing IMO (the original name was the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization, or IMCO, but the name was changed in 1982 to IMO). The IMO Convention entered into force in 1958 and the new organisation met for the first time the following year. The purposes of the Organisation, are "to provide machinery for cooperation among Governments in the field of governmental regulation and practices relating to technical matters of all kinds affecting shipping engaged in international trade; to encourage and facilitate the general adoption of standards in matters concerning maritime safety, efficiency of navigation and prevention and control of marine pollution from ships". The Organisation is also empowered to deal with administrative and legal matters related to these purposes. IMO's first task was to adopt a new version of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), the most important of all treaties dealing with maritime safety. This was achieved in 1960 and IMO then turned its attention to such matters as the facilitation of international maritime traffic, load lines and the carriage of dangerous goods, while the system of measuring the tonnage of ships was revised. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
Ports are the link between maritime and land-based trade. You must be
knowing that Galle Port was once a famous port in the world. Traditionally
ports were located where the geography was favourable. 
