Transport markets as instruments for regulating the TSL sector
The transport and logistics (TSL) sector must be viewed through the prism of the activities it carries out within the framework of broadly understood management processes in the sphere of supply, production, distribution, and returns.
Its functions and numerous tasks on a micro scale, as well as its relations with the environment, are particularly evident in the sphere of commodity exchange (Figure 1). Commodity markets (supply and sales), located in the supply chain system where primary demand for tangible goods arises, have a significant impact on the efficient functioning of the TSL sector.
These markets strongly influence TSL sector markets, where demand for services is already of a secondary nature, generated by primary demand (Figure 1). Commodity markets, where all flow streams take place in the logistics space based on SCM standards, therefore effectively act as regulators of transport markets, shaping primarily the demand sphere of secondary markets and – consequently – the efficiency of the TSL sector’s functioning. This, in turn, will depend mainly on: the efficiency of logistics supply chains and the forms of management applied to them (SCM), the state of development of the transport infrastructure network (logistics infrastructure), the level of costs and prices in transport, including external costs, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the functioning of other types of markets – labor, financial, etc.
Transport activity conducted in the TSL sector has always been and is subject to regulation. This is not only due to the need to ensure the required level of coherence of this sector with other economic systems and markets. This regulation is also dictated by requirements in the field of safety and environmental protection, as well as social and economic considerations, for example, the need to eliminate unacceptable forms of state aid and distortions of competition, discrimination against entities, etc. This makes this sector subject to regulation to a wide extent. The transport sector is subject to the influence of various regulatory mechanisms. Its regulatory sphere, which is quite complex, covers two fundamentally different regulatory subsystems with their typical regulatory mechanisms (Figure 2).
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2/2012.