ASSESSMENT OF THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE MARITIME TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE OF UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The article provides an assessment of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine and European countries. Methods for assessing competitiveness are considered and identified as the most relevant method for assessing the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine and European countries. The main indicators of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure have been determined for the main factors of ensuring the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure. Highlighted a group of European countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, France, Belgium, as they are leaders in the field of maritime transport infrastructure. Several stages were implemented to calculate the integral indicator of the maritime transport infrastructure’s competitiveness. At the first stage, the indicators were standardized, at the second, the weight coefficient of the selected indicators was calculated, at the third stage, the total rank of indicators was calculated, at the fourth stage, the weighting coefficient was calculated for each group of indicators, and at the fifth stage, the integral indicator of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure was determined. It was determined that the leaders in assessing the integral indicator of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure are Great Britain (8.13), Germany (7.78), and Belgium (7.07).Ukraine has the lowest rate (4.7).Also, it was found that the most influential are external factors, such as economic, legal, political, social, technological, environmental, integration, in-stitutional (Ukraine — 2.65; Netherlands — 2.87; Germany – 2.07; Spain – 2,19; Great Britain – 1.87; France – 2.16; Belgium – 3.22).The main directions of increasing the competitiveness of the Ukrainian maritime transport infrastructure are proposed, taking into account the experience of the leading countries.


INTRODUCTION
The maritime transport infrastructure is widely used for domestic and international transport. It plays an important role in forming the country's economic ties, especially with foreign countries, and is characterized by high efficiency compared to other types of transport infrastructure. Maritime transport has more advantages than disadvantages, such as lower transportation costs, high carrying capacity, virtually no restrictions on the size of cargo and the throughput of sea transport, unified transportation standards, a single legal framework, so we can talk about the importance of sea transport not only with from the point of view of cargo transportation, as well as the movement of passengers.

LITERATURE REVIEW
At the present stage, the issues of increasing the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure in the scientific and foreign literature are highlighted from different points of view by many authors. So, N. V. Dubovyk investigated approaches to

RESULTS
An important stage in the development of strategic directions to improve the competitive position of the maritime transport infrastructure is the assessment of competitiveness, this assessment will maximize the improvement of activities and reveal the hidden potential of the maritime transport infrastructure for its successful functioning in the transport services market.
When assessing the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure (MTI), several methods should be applied, which should ensure the maximum correspondence of the results obtained to the real state of the distribution of competitive forces and make it possible to determine the competitiveness of the industry taking into account a sufficient number of factors.
Each separate method for assessing competitiveness has advantages and disadvantages and a specific set of factors and variables. More often, scientists use such assessment methods as a matrix, the method of expert assessments, and an integrated approach. The whole set of methods for assessing the management of MTI competitiveness can be divided into qualitative, quantitative, special, and complex.
Qualitative assessment methods have a low degree of mathematical formalization, which is characterized by implementation complexity and discrete assessment. They do not allow the assessment of competitiveness in the process of analyzing and formulating priority areas to strengthen competitive positions in the market [9].
Quantitative methods allow us to assess the real capabilities of an enterprise in the competition for strategic areas of management and make balanced strategic management decisions [10, р. 18].
Special methods make it possible to assess the competitiveness of an object in certain aspects of its activity: production, innovation, marketing, financial, etc. Comprehensive methods are based on an integrated approach to assessing competitiveness [11, с. 57].
It has been established that the most relevant methods for assessing competitiveness are methods based on an integrated approach since they are aimed at analyzing the full range of functioning parameters. Also, some researchers [12, р. 65; 13, р. 227; 14, р. 602] note that comprehensive methods for assessing competitiveness are aimed at analyzing a large range of the most important parameters of an enterprise. The priority of such methods is to obtain reliable and more accurate information about the competitiveness of the subject and its advantages.
The feasibility of using an integrated method for assessing the competitiveness of maritime transport infrastructure is because maritime transport infrastructure is a complex system, the development of which depends on the nature and intensity of various economic processes, the influence of many factors. For an adequate assessment of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, it is necessary to use a full set of indicators that can characterize the degree of competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure and take into account all the most important aspects of its activities. In this regard, it should be noted that to assess the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, we have formed an integral indicator, which is the result of the aggregation of the parameters of the maritime transport infrastructure.
In previous scientific articles [15; 16] it was found that the main factors for ensuring the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure are: external and internal, basic and derivative, general and special. In our study, the listed factors were included in the calculation of the integrated indicator, which can be quantified. External factors are more fully characterized by the complex indicator «Global Competitiveness Index» since it includes such indices as [17]: Macroeconomic stability, market size, product market, financial system, and business dynamism, characterizing economic factors.
Public-sector performance and future orientation of government -political factors.
Checks and balances (budget transparency, judicial independence, efficiency of legal framework), corporate governance, transparency, and property rights -legal factors.
Innovation capability and introduction of information and communication technologies -technological and information providing (general factors).
Environmental determinant more fully outlines «Environmental Performance Index», which outlines the state of the environment and the viability of ecosystems.

The next group of factors is basic:
Natural and climatic conditions -it is necessary to use the «length of the coastline» indicator, which is an important component of the development of shipping and maritime transport infrastructure in general.
Socio-demographic -indicator «number of employed», demonstrating the potential for employment in the maritime transport infrastructure.
Regarding the derivative factors, we note that to assess the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, it is necessary to choose: Indicator «R&D expenditures in GDP», characterizing the «research and structural achievements» in the country.
Indicator «number of enterprises of service activities incidental to water transportation» -competitive conditions for economic activity and the provision of maritime transport services (competitive conditions for the provision of Maritime Transport Services -MTS).
The next are internal factors since they directly characterize the maritime transport infrastructure of the state: Labor factors (internal) -«internal», «average number of employees» in the field of maritime transport infrastructure.
Technical and technological -indicators «number of ships», «DWT» (deadweight tons in thousands), showing the full carrying capacity of the country's merchant fleet.
Service and production -indicators «processed cargo» and «transported passengers» maritime transport infrastructure.
Based on the initial data in Table 1, the indicators were normalized by year and the standardized coefficients were calculated. So, the index of criteria is defined as standardized by the maximum value of the index of the indicator calculated by the formula [18, с. 146]: Since the proposed indicators are presented in absolute terms and have different units of measurement, the next step in the assessment is the standardization procedure. This is necessary for the adequate application of mathematical methods and to establish a correspondence between quantitative values.
Based on the initial data in Table 1 The next stage of the assessment is the calculation of the coefficients of the significance of the selected indicators. For this, the total rank of the j-th indicator of the i-th years was calculated using the formula: where ji -separate indicator for each factor; m -year.
After calculating the total rank, the total rank of the j-th indicators was calculated to determine the coefficient of the significance of the factors according to formula 3 and the calculation results are presented in Table 2.
where k -factor weight of indicators, Sitotal rank of the і-th indicator, n -number of indicators.
The weighting factor for each group of indicators has been determined, which affects the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure (formula 4), and the calculation results are presented in Table 3.
At the last stage, based on preliminary calculations, an integral indicator of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure was introduced, which is the sum of the weight coefficients for each group of indicators: where ∆ -integral indicator of competitiveness MTI, Sitotal rank of the і-th indicator, kifactor weight, n -number of indicators.    1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  The calculation of the integral indicator provides information on the level of competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine and European countries, taking into account all influencing indicators. The main advantages of the integral indicator are that it synthesizes the influence of the indicators included in the analysis; reduces the problem of assessing the competitiveness of maritime transport infrastructure to a single quantitative value, which greatly simplifies the economic interpretation of the results.
Based on the results of the calculations, it can be concluded that when assessing the integral indicator of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure for Ukraine, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, and Belgium, external factors are the most influential. Labor factors have a greater impact in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. In Italy, the next most influential factors are production factors (К=1.84), in the United Kingdomtechnical (К = 1.9), in France -derivatives (К = 1.33), in Belgium -labor (К = 3.38) ( Table 3). The leaders in assessing the integral indicator of the influence of factors on the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure are Great Britain (8.13), Germany (7.78), and Belgium (7.07) ( Figure 1).
As for Ukraine, the external factors influencing the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure are the basic factors (K = 1.3). Since Ukraine possesses relatively large socio-demographic and natural-climatic resources, our state, to develop competitively, needs to focus on improving internal factors, because they are of low importance for ensuring the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, so the weight coefficient of technical factors is 0.11. labor -0.03 and production -0.07.
Considering the integral indicator of the Ukrainian competitiveness of MIT about European countries, it should be noted that Ukraine needs to implement the experience of the leading countries to increase the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure.
One  The next key element of ensuring the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure is the use of logistics technology «dry port». To ensure the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, it is necessary to implement a modern model of managing the seaports of Ukraine, taking into account the European experience. The experience of reforming the maritime transport infrastructure and state regulation of creating favorable conditions for the development of port infrastructure in the ports of Hamburg (Germany), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Antwerp (Belgium), Le Havre (France) deserves to be borrowed, in particular, to create favorable conditions for the development of port infrastructure, the respective states use such a tool as the «port-landlord» model of land concessions when the port administration acts as a landlord, who has at his disposal land within the water areas of the ports [27].
The next element of ensuring the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure is the introduction of innovative logistics systems and an increase in the general level of informatization of port activities. So, in the countries of Europe, the «Single Window» form is being implemented, functioning in the seaports of Hamburg (Germany), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Felixstowe (Great Britain), Le Havre and Marseille (France), Antwerp (Belgium), Barcelona and Bilbao (Spain) and the like. On their basis, the International Port Community Systems Association (IPCSA) was created, the purpose of which is to simplify and harmonize administrative procedures applicable to maritime transport, through the electronic transmission of information and streamlining reporting procedures [28].

CONCLUSION
Thus, the results of assessing the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine and European countries made it possible to determine that Ukraine is in a low position. Therefore, Ukraine needs to focus on labor, technical, and production factors to ensure the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure, since they are of the least importance. However, the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine has a fairly large indicator of the weight of basic and external factors about European countries. In this regard, the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine has great potential, which should be used in full. Assessment of the competitiveness of the maritime transport infrastructure of Ukraine will allow determining not only the directions for the development of maritime infrastructure but also to develop specific strategic measures to increase the competitiveness of the maritime infrastructure of Ukraine in the context of European integration.