INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS OF THE SERVICES OF THE SEA PORTS OF THE BLACK SEA-AZOV BASIN FROM THE POSITIONS OF INTERPORT COMPETITION

Abstract

Topicality. The urgency of the topic is due to the rapid development of integration and globalization processes that have changed the conditions of port business and the requirements for the provision of seaport services. An increasingly problematic issue is the need to determine the competitiveness of Ukraine's maritime infrastructure, which lags behind most developed countries in terms of service quality and speed of transport, in order to further identify effective ways to increase the competitive position of seaports. The problem of analysis of interport competition and competitiveness of port services in modern conditions of world market development requires improvement of the methodological apparatus. Analysis of the international competitiveness of port services is considered necessary to do according to a methodology that takes into account the set of production facilities and the relationships between them, the influence of numerous factors and variables using modern methods of multicriteria analysis..Aim and tasks. The aim of the article is to determine the current competitive position of Ukrainian seaports in the Black Sea-Azov basin using the method of "Data Envelopment Analysis" to provide further recommendations for its improvement..Research results. The study found that the competitiveness of services is understood as the degree of their compliance with the requirements of the selected market; as a set of factors that reflect both the technical and economic characteristics of services and the conditions of their implementation; as a set of consumer and cost characteristics, in connection with which there is a distribution of demand. In general, the factors influencing the competitiveness of seaport services can be grouped into a block of geographical, natural-climatic, infrastructural, logistical-technological, geopolitical and institutional factors. Assessment of the competitiveness of seaports from the standpoint of interport competition by the method of "Analysis of the operating environment" determined that the ports of Chernomorsk, Yuzhny, Odessa quite effectively use available capacity (88.6%, 98.9% and 85.1% respectively), but lag behind indicators of the ports of Trabzon, Batumi, Constanta, Burgas, South, Caucasus.Conclusion. The study found that the main approach on the basis of which is the formation of the competitiveness of the seaport, is a resource approach aimed at increasing port capacity. To analyze the international competitiveness of port services used a methodology that takes into account the set of production facilities and the relationships between them, the influence of factors and variables using methods of multi-criteria analysis (method "Analysis of the operating environment"). Prospects for future research are related to the development of effective ways to increase and use port capacity to increase the international competitiveness of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea-Azov region.