The COVID-19 pandemic, the March 2021 blocking of the Suez Canal by a container ship that had run aground, and the more recent shock engendered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continue to impact
the global economy. The most visible indications of stress in the system are the shortages of certain products, the ships waiting at anchorage outside the major maritime ports, and the impact on the cost of goods. These challenges also continue to underline the critical role that ports, and their associated logistical chains, play in the global economy.
A great variety of public and private stakeholders interact in a port to maintain the flows of vital medical and food supplies, critical agricultural products, energy streams, and other goods and services
essential to facilitate the economic life of a country. These interactions comprise physical interactions, such as cargo-handling operations, vessel-related services, and transfers to/from land-based modes
for imports and exports.
Maritime transport carries over 80 percent of global merchandise trade by volume, and any impediment or friction at the port will have tangible repercussions for their respective hinterlands and populations. In the short term, this is likely to take the form of shortages of essential goods and higher prices, as we saw early in the pandemic. But over the medium to longer term, an inefficient port will result in
slower economic growth, less employment, and higher costs for importers and exporters.
Despite the centrality of the port to global value chains, one of the major challenges to stimulating improvement has been the lack of a reliable, consistent, and comparable basis on which to compare
operational performance across different ports. While modern ports collect data for performance purposes, the quality, consistency, and availability of data, the definitions employed, and the capacity and
willingness of the organizations to collect and transmit data to a collating body have all precluded the development of a robust comparable measure(s) to assess performance across ports and time.
However, the introduction of new technologies, increased digitalization, and the willingness on the part of industry interests to work collectively toward systemwide improvements now provide the capacity and the opportunity to measure and compare container port performance in a robust and reliable manner. This technical report, which represents the second edition of the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI), has been produced by the Transport Global Practice of the World Bank in collaboration with the Maritime, Trade and Supply Chain division of S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The CPPI is intended, as in its earlier iteration, to serve as a reference point for improvement for key stakeholders in the global economy, including national governments, port authorities and operators,
development agencies, supranational organizations, various maritime interests, and other public and private stakeholders in trade, logistics, and supply chain services. The CPPI is not intended to cover
the entire performance of a port, but to illustrate opportunities for improvement and, hopefully, stimulate a dialogue among key stakeholders to move this essential agenda forward.
Click here for the full report
Acreditation:
The World Bank, 2022. “The Container Port Performance Index
2021: A Comparable Assessment of Container Port Performance.” World Bank, Washington, DC. License:
Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO.