An Analysis Of Container Terminals Technical Efficiency In China Mainland

Since entering the 21 st century,with the acceleration of economic globalization and the development of international shipping industry,the competition between container ports in the world has became more and more heated,which poses a urgent issue to the container terminals.As the front-line production department of container ports,container terminals must improve the technical efficiency(TE) to enhance their competitiveness.In order to maintain the rapid developing tendency of Chinese container terminals,to analyze the TE accurately and propose effective measures to improve TE of container terminals in China is important and meaningful.Stochastic Frontier Analysis(SFA) has been in a wide application in the research of TE.Owing to take the efficiency interference of random errors into account,excluding the impact of external factors which is beyond the control of production department from non- effficiency,the application of SFA is in accordance with the actual production situation.Currently,SFA has become an important means of efficiency evaluation in domestic and foreign agriculture,banking institutions,insurance and other industries.SFA is introduced into the analysis of container terminals TE in this paper.Selecting Berth length,number of quayside gantry,number of yard gantry,yard area,number of on-the-job workers and container throughput as input / output variables in the model,this paper selects 24 major container terminals in China mainland to measure and analyse their TE,with the panel data from 2005 to 2007.Meanwhile,this paper also take account of concerned factors which have an effect on container terminals TE from the angle of container terminal companies' operation and management.As a result of data availability,average berth depth,rate of gantry in sound mechanical condition,route number and the proportion of workers with middle and senior titles are selceted in the model as variables of impact factors.Empirical results show that the average TE of 24 Chinese major container terminals from 2005 to 2007 is 66.81%,which means there is much scope for improvement.Although the annual differences and individual differences of TE of sample is obvious,the average TE of overall sample shows an growing trend and the gap of TE between container terminals is to narrow. Finally,this paper puts forward concerned proposals for improving TE of Chinese container terminals.