What kind of future for the Port of Beirut

Abstract

The purpose of my thesis is to try to determine whether the port of Beirut can take advantage of his geographical position and redefine its role as either a transshipment hub or a transit gateway. It is obvious that in the present there are various new players that were able to take advantage of their location and of the technological changes to improve the performance of their ports while Lebanon was still trying to recover from its destroying war. The advance in technologies and the move to containerized traffic have rendered old port structures completely obsolete in favor of new ports that were able to cater for the new needs of this century. The Port of Beirut will be competing with ports on the East Mediterranean coast as well on the Arabian Gulf A five-force model will be used to assess the level of competition in the field and the ease of entry. This will include studying the characteristics of all the other players, their ports structural adequacy and their services. According to the analysis I will try to define on what basis the port can compete and what he has to do internally and externally to be able to gain a certain niche of the market. In all cases, the country will need to undertake major reforms in view of the new era of privatization that is being used extensively in the transport sector.