China Merchants Holdings International CMHI has urged a terminal alliance along the maritime silk road to counter the alliances among container carriers.
The alliance would enhance the comparative advantages of pairing arrival and departure ports, Bai Jingtao general manager of CMHI told the Maritime Silk Road Port International Cooperation Forum in Ningbo today.
The port pair should work together to provide logistics services for manufacturers and consumers and provide financial services to strengthen the comparative advantages of each port in the terminal alliance, he said, arguing that this would enable them to compete against shipping company alliances.
He suggested that all terminals in the alliance should employ a unified information service platform based on big data providing unimpeded access to information between terminals especially between the port pair.
The terminal alliance would allow data transparency and data flow unlike the current the situation of the ports as ‘information islands’.
As for the further development of terminal alliance, Bai said the participants should look to supply financial services and aim for international traders to become reliant on their services.
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.