Malcolm Tull

The purpose of this report is to describe and assess the performance of Western Australia’s eight port authorities.2 The context for this research is a February 2006 report by Access Economics prepared for the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development (AusCID) (A Scorecard of the Design of Economic Regulation of Infrastructure, July 2006). This report aimed to rate “the extent to which the regime [for third party access] in each jurisdiction is designed in a way that is likely to foster good decisions and outcomes”; it explicitly did “not rate the decisions, or outcomes, of each jurisdiction’s regulatory regime or the industry that it regulates”…

In order to increase port efficiency and productivity, some countries have privatised their ports. But much analysis of port privatisation has been universalistic in nature and neglected issues of path dependence and culture. While not denying the importance of global forces, it is suggested that national institutions and values have shaped the form and pattern of privatisation. In order to undertake a more contextualised assessment, we undertake a case study of the privatisation of Port Klang, Malaysia's leading port. Privatisation Malaysian style not only illustrates the way in which culture and institutions shape policy but also confirms the view that it is sound management and a competitive environment rather than ownership that is the key to port efficiency.