Middle East container ports are the most efficient in the world
Ports in the Middle East took four of the top five spots in the second edition of the developed by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence, according to World Bank's release.
CPPI is a comparable index of global container port performance intended to serve as a reference point for key stakeholders in the global economy.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Port tops the ranking in 2021, with regional competitors Port Salalah in Oman, Hamad Port in Qatar and Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi rounding out the top five. Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Islamic Port also featured strongly in eighth place overall. The ranking is based on time vessels needed to spend in port to complete workloads over the course of 2021, a year that saw unprecedented port congestion and disruption to global supply chains.
The new report also highlights the resilience of East Asian ports and the capacity of Chinese ports in particular to effectively handle challenges brought about by the pandemic. Three of the large Chinese gateways, Shanghai (Yangshan), Ningbo and the southern port of Guangzhou, feature in the top 10, while last year’s most efficient port – Yokohama in Japan – dropped to 10th place overall.
The index and underlying data are intended to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement that would benefit all key stakeholders in global trade, including governments, shipping lines, port and terminal operators, shippers, logistics companies and consumers. Key port performance metrics show large discrepancies in global port efficiency in 2021, with top performers such as King Abdullah Port achieving an average of 97 container moves per hour of vessel port time compared with just 26 container moves per hour at the main ports on North America’s West Coast. More than four-fifths of global merchandise trade by volume are carried by sea, and approximately 35 percent of total volumes and over 60 percent of commercial value is shipped in containers.
In 23rd place, the Port of Virginia is the top ranked port in North America, followed by Miami (29) and Halifax in Canada (46). The Moroccan port of Tanger-Med, in 6th place, is the highest ranked port in Europe and North Africa. Cartagena in Colombo (12) ranks highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, while Port Matadi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (171) is the best performing port in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The CPPI is based on total port hours per ship call, defined as the elapsed time between when a ship reaches a port to its departure from the berth having completed its cargo exchange. Greater or lesser workloads are accounted for by examining the underlying data within 10 different call size ranges. Five distinct ship size groups are accounted for in the methodology given the potential for greater fuel and emissions savings on larger vessels.