Ports have historically taken a variety of different forms (Brooks 2004:168-183). Most developing
countries have had state owned facilities and the port has operated either as a Service port or
a Tool port. In a Service port not only does the port provide all the facilities, it also services
the vessels and their cargo using labour employed by the port authority (Brooks 2004: 169). In
contrast, in a tool port, commercial operators do the servicing (Brooks 2004: 170). However,
the evolving consensus on the most appropriate management structures is the Landlord port
model. In this model ‘the port maintain ownership while the infrastructure is leased to private
operating companies’ (Brooks 2004: 170).
The World Bank and its regional affi liates (ADB, IAB etc) are the institutional driving force
behind much of the restructuring of ports in the developing world. Up to 1997, reform has been
instituted in 230 ports in developing or transitional countries as part of structural adjustment
packages (ITF, 2004: 2). It is not inaccurate to suggest, therefore, that the World Bank’s Port
Reform Toolkit Reform Toolkit (hereafter the PRTK) is perhaps the most signifi cant document in charting the (hereafter the PRTK) is perhaps the most significant document in charting the
changes that have occurred in the organisation and management of the port sector. This is selfconsciously
both a descriptive and prescriptive work, since it seeks to analyse the changes that
have occurred in the sector as well as outline how ports can move towards a particular form
of port operation and organisation. The normative assumption underlying the PRTK is that
some form of privatisation is necessary in the port sector. Once this assumption is accepted,
the rest of the PRTK reads as a manual for how to navigate past the various obstacles-legal,
institutional, fi nancial and labour-that may confront would-be reformers.
In this sense, the prescriptions for port reform are in keeping with a broader Bank position
that stresses the changed role for the state should be primarily limited to enabling the operation
of market forces, rather than having an interventionist role in accumulation, correcting market
failure or in equity enhancing measures, its role is now to provide the legal and administrative
conditions in which the market can fl ourish. With its emphasis on supply-side factors (‘build
it and they will come’) delivered through the private sector, the PRTK is part of a continuum
of thinking which has resonance with earlier statements such as the 1994 World Development
Report Infrastructure for Development Infrastructure for Development. This latter report argues for a model of development . This latter report argues for a model of development
achievable only by the government increasing private sector participation, a process the Bank
sees as centred on commercial management, competition, and stakeholder involvement