Insight for Sunday 14 December 2008

The port and shipping sector helped New Zealand trade its way from a remote colonial outpost to a first world nation.

It still plays an important part in the economy with eighty-two percent of the value of the country's trade going by sea.

But the ports that serve that trade are over-capitalised, under performing, and prone to political meddling.

20 years after the last port crisis Eric Frykberg looks at the serious economic challenges facing the sector and explores what needs to be done.

Picture:A container ship at the Port of Auckland