Efficiency Analysis Of West African Container Ports And Terminals

In the past two decades the steady growth of seaborne trade has resulted in the increase of container ships, container ports and their terminals. The structure of the shipping market is, moreover, continuously evolving. On the carrier side, shipping companies form consortia and alliances; on the port side, global terminal operators and dedicated container terminals are emerging. Seaport efficiency is an important factor when it comes to handling of goods in the international supply chains. It affects transportation and logistics in both national and international supply chains. It is therefore, important to evaluate technical efficiency of seaports to reflect the extent to which they utilize resources relative to optimal levels and reveal their position in this competitive environment.The aim of this research is to evaluate the efficiency of container ports and terminals within the West African sub-region and to study how to improve the scale efficiency of any particular port/terminal. In particular, we study how certain factors influence the efficiency of container ports and terminals.Chapter 1 discusses the general organogram of the maritime transport industry, which includes maritime transportation, port navigation services, cargo handling services, cargo transit and storage services and hinterland transport. It also discusses some aspects of the container port industry including its competitiveness between ports.Chapter 2 established the basis for the model specifications by studying the functions and configurations of container ports and terminals. This chapter also interrogates the operations and cost structures of ocean carriers and sea ports by looking at the ocean shipping market and position of container transport and handling services in terms of port performance indicators. This chapter also uses the gravitation model to divide the hinterlands of two adjourning ports in West Africa.Chapter 3 focused on the methodology applied and the use of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) in the terminal and port industry, In this vein, the study will look at 3 elementary aspects from previous literature on the scope which includes, the objectives and scope of previous studies, the variable specifications; which is definition of the measures used for output, inputs and spatial factors and lastly, the estimation techniques and model specifications. It also looked at the calculations of the technical and scale efficiencies. This was done by designing the mathematical models.Chapter 4 examined the container terminal level efficiency of the 4 West African ports studied previously by valuating the terminal specific technical and scale efficiency and dissecting the impact of the two spatial factors on efficiency, i.e., the terminal type and the terminal operator type.Chapter 5 used the panel data of the 4 container ports of Dakar, Abidjan, Tema, and Lagos, we studied the efficiency at the container port level. It also focused on analyzing the trend of port productivity and efficiency overtime and studied the impact of an exogenous variable, and trading volume, on productivity and efficiency. We will further assess the port-specific technical and scale efficiency for each of the under study ports for a period of time.Chapter 6 analyzed the outcome of the research and its implication on container terminals.Chapter 7 discussed the port related policies in the West African sub-region. It also compared and contrasted the turns to scale at both port and terminal levels in order to understand the different market behaviors between the two levels. This chapter further gave a conclusion of the whole dissertation and give worthy recommendations for future research.The research concludes that the majority of the container ports and terminals in our West African samples are found to be technically inefficient:90% of container ports have their technical efficiency lower than 0.80; 95% of container terminals have their technical efficiency lower than 0.80. Trading volume plays a key role in the efficiency of a container port. The annual percentage increase in port output is slower than what the technological improvement allows. Container terminals are proven to be more productive than multiple purpose terminals. Global terminal operators were not proven to out-perform local terminal operators as was expected. It was also found that the container terminal operation industry is over-scaled. The research findings here can potentially affect decisions made by carriers, terminal operators and policy makers, as it also provides an overview of efficiencies for all container ports/terminals and also examines in detail the sources of inefficiency for individual ports.