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ITALIAN PORTS AND THE WIND OF CHANGE
Author(s) -
RIDOLFI GIOVANNI
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9663.1998.tb01565.x
Subject(s) - port (circuit theory) , sea transport , harmony (color) , business , order (exchange) , government (linguistics) , economy , multimodal transport , international trade , economics , engineering , finance , art , linguistics , philosophy , marketing , electrical engineering , visual arts
In Italy, sea routes have always been of great importance both for inter‐island and trade links. Italian ports handle 67% of the total volume of imports and 41% of exports. Italy's economy is therefore heavily dependent on sea transport and effective port activities. Nevertheless, the contribution of maritime commerce to the general transport system has not been adequate because the lack of a decisive policy for the sector has put a brake on the development of sea transport and ports. Good prospects however have emerged from new government undertakings to organise the whole maritime‐port‐transport sector into some sort of order. This will involve, in harmony with the EU, the criteria of interdependence and functional integration of the different modalities of transport, which will contribute towards improving inland accessibilty between the less developed south and the developed north regions, and also external accessibility, that is the access to the neighbouring countries of the advanced transalpine North and of the emerging trans‐Mediterranean South.