우리나라 벌크선 시장의 전자입찰제 활용에 관한 고찰: 국내 주요화주의 전자입찰제 사례를 중심으로

Abstract

Getting into 21st century's, all of global companies have been trying to increase its competitive in unlimited competition for the purpose of survival. Futhermore, internet-technology led appearance of electronic trade in accordance with the rapid change of management surroundings. Most shipping companies also try to meet customer's need and set up various e-market places within the shipping industry along with a such change, ultimately aim to make cost-effective. however, the electronic trade is limited to role as a secondary tool for exchange of information rather than actual trading process because of the industry's characteristic. In a case of bulk market which plays a part in perfect competitive market, basically could form ocean-freight among the participants such as shippers and shipowners, its applicability for electronic trade is relatively higher than other sectors, especially, it works for contract of carriage. In this paper, we analyze electronic bidding system for bulk market in Korea and investigate electronic bidding system which is practically and widely operated by major shippers in Korea when the shippers sign contracts of carriage to import primary raw materials such as coal or iron ore from foreign countries. In this regard, the study contributes to the literature in several ways, comparing to a number of previous studies were mainly focused on e-market place for the shipping industry. As a result of case studies, we point out some findings leading to few problems when majors shippers in Korea - Posco/Kepco/Hyundai Steel - make contract with shipping companies through electronic bidding system. First, shippers used to run the lowest bid price method considering only pricing element as a standard of contracts, which could occur dumping in bid and collusion as well as a short of safety in transportation. Secondly, there were transparency in bidding process and a risk of information leakage due to a lack of well-managed system. Thirdly, we observe drain of national wealth, which is resulting from not operational issues of electronic bidding system but contractual usage in shipping market. However, the open-competition electronic bidding by major shippers has underlying implication for the problem than other contract methods. For example, every registered bidder in each system could take unlimitedly participate in the bidding, regardless of importance and scale of contracts. The main aim of the paper is to ensure fair and stable transaction environment in Korean bulk market through efficient implementation of electronic bidding system. On the other hands, it is important to acknowledge limitations of the study, which we have observed the problem in shipping company's prospects and investigated samples for Korean major shippers only. Therefore, we would like to suggest to do ongoing research against the subject by doing comparative studies and empirical tests in future so as to find out advanced solution.