第三世界の海運業と外国援助 : セイロン海運公社の事例研究

Most of the newly emerging states in the third world have been keen to establish their own merchant fleets since the political independence from the Western colonial powers. Some of them have sought for certain financial aid from the industrial countries in order to reinforce their national flag carriers. In the case of Sri Lanka, the Ceylon Shipping Corporation which was set up as a public enterprise in 1971, purchased eight second-hand cargo ships (85,965 ton) at about 4.8 billion yen and managed to transfer handsome profit to the state treasury annually from the inception of business. After the general election of 1977, the new government embarked along with her open economic policy on an ambitious project to containerise Colombo Harbour and replace the aged merchant fleet with highly modernised one. Then Japanese government pledged to support this project and offered concessional loans to both the Sri Lanka Port Authority and the Ceylon Shipping Corporation in spite of the prolonged recession in the global shipping market. For the latter project, the credit of 5.8 billion yen with the interest of 3.25% for 30 years instalments (grace period of 10 years) was provided through the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund to the CSC to acquire only three multi-purpose vessels in 1981 although the Ministry of Trade and Shipping of Sri Lanka had requested the financial assistance to buy an entire fleetof 12 brand new ships. International tenders were called in 1981. With the rising cost of ships, however, it was possible to award orders for the building of two vessels (10,000 ton cargo ship to carry 278 containers and 3,000 ton cargo ship to carry 101 containers). Almost at the same time, the CSC placed the orders with a South Korean ship-builder for four vessels (two 9,000 ton cargo ships to carry 440 containers each and two 3,000 ton cargo ships to carry 175 containers each) at more reasonable cost of 8.4 billion yen, and also to an Argentina ship-builder for three 10,600 ton cargo ships to carry 537 containers each at the cost of 10.1 billion yen. The terms of loan were 10 years instalments with 6% interest for the Korean ships, and 12 years instalments with 7.5% interest for the Argentina ships. The author of this paper carried out a socio-economic survey in Tokyo and Colombo in 1986, and examined the economic rationale of the above vessels built by Japanese shipyards in comparison with the Korean vessels. Since the year of delivery (1982) of the new ships from Korea and Japan in place of the ageing conventional freighters, the CSC has successively experienced huge financial losses which have been heavy burdens upon the consecutive national budgets of Sri Lanka. The repayment of the interest and principals of the ship loans is the major contributory factor to the losses of the CSC, and the more serious financial difficulties will be envisaged in the trends of the appreciation of Japanese Yen vis-a-vsi the devaluation of Sri Lankan rupee. In the concluding remarks, the author proposes to reconsider such narrow economic justification of foreign aid as strict cost-benefit analysis, internal rate of returns and so on. After conducting field observations and document examinations in the wake of modernised fleets of the CSC, the article suggests the need to formulate more relevant criteria for the future economic cooperation projects with the third world nations