Marine Terminal Operators Under Multimodal Transport Laws and Their Need of Insurance

Abstract

Introduction: The transport industry has drastically changed during the past decades, with the advent of containerization and the subsequent development of multimodal transport. These changes, moreover, have been matter of concern due to the complex issues arising out in the legal and insurance field. Thus, in the legal field attempts have been made to set up a uniform regime of liability applicable to the carrier, in order to avoid the fragmentation resulting from different regimes concerned with each mode of transport. Besides, in the insurance field insurers have been coping with what an author described as the "multimodal muddle of conflicting laws and regulations", where the insurers try to cover the risks of door-to-door movements by a combination of transports.Transport technologies in the 1990s are based on containerization and electronic data interchange (EDI) backing a rather complex network of multimodal operations.Nevertheless, there is still a remarkable mis-match between developed and developing countries insofar as containerization and multimodal transport is concerned. Although there has been an increase in the use of containerization, multimodal transport in developing countries is not a widespread practice. In fact, the physical limitations of infrastructure, equipment and technology to move goods; inadequate institutional and legal transport environment discouraging transport operators to accept responsibility for multimodal transport services, and complicated import and export procedures (in particular Customs formalities) make it quite difficult the growth of intermodalism in these countries.Despite the above, however, there are reasons to believe that this panorama could change in the coming years because of the privatization undertaken in the context of structural adjustment programs or stabilization reforms, which are a component of IMF conditionally or a precondition for obtaining World Bank loans. This process is introducing significant reforms in the transport sector as well as commercial ports characterized by deregulation, decentralization of port authorities or privatization of port services, whereby it might be expected that the introduction of new technologies through private sector investments, and different management practices by the reformed port authorities will lead to a new era for this industry, improving the traditional role played by commercial ports in the transport chain of developing countries.It should be thought that privatization or decentralization in developing countries, will make it easier or at least feasible the introduction of new technologies within the ports; however, this will also bring new risks in respect of which terminal operators.