ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Italian port sector and its crisis, with specific attention for port governance issues, which are now under review in the Italian Parliament: the Port Authority (PA's) role, their financial independence and their relation with other public authorities. It focuses on the growing need of vertical and horizontal coordination among public bodies, in order to find a balanced institutional framework in which PAs can quickly react to market changes. In fact the reform law resulted in a framework characterized by a severe institutional fragmentation and an excessive centralization of port financing. The chapter addresses the Ligurian case as a relevant case study calling for some forms of coordination among ports in proximity. Ligurian ports reveal a very low capacity for producing value, equal to around 1/5th of that of Northern range competitors. In the early stage of the reform, many Italian ports experienced a dramatic rise in throughput, partially generated by the creation of new transhipment facilities.
