7 June 2024 (Lloyd's List) - CONTAINER ports in East and Southeast Asia dominated the top spots of the World Bank Container Port Performance Index, occupying 13 of the top 20 spots.

The index is produced by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence and is based solely on average hours per port call (port hours are measured from when a ship first enters a port to when it departed from its berth).

Top spot in 2023 went to Yangshan, China, which forms part of the Port of Shanghai (which ranked first by teu throughput in Lloyd's List's Top 100 Container Ports 2023).

Yangshan was followed by Salalah, Oman and Cartagena, Colombia. Tanger Med, Morocco and Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia completed the top five.

One of the big stories of the port was Visakhapatnam, India, ranking 19th in 2023 from a lowly 115 in 2022. The United Arab Emirates' flagship Khalifa Port ranked 3rd in 2022, but fell to 29th in 2023.

Just one North American port, Philadelphia, ranked in the top 50. Wellington was the only port in the Oceania region to rank in the top 100, but not one sub-Saharan African port made that list.

Bottom of the list, in 405th position, was Cape Town, preceded by Ngqura, South Africa, Mersin, Türkiye, Cotonou, Benin and Tacoma, US.

The average duration of port call in 2023 was 40.5 hours, an increase on 2022's figure of 36.8 hours.

Arrival wait times are down since the peak congestion of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and Q3 2022. They sunk to their lowest in the second quarter of 2023, but have climbed since then and reached 9.57 hours in 4Q23.

"While the challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath eased further in 2023, container shipping continues to be an unpredictable and volatile sector," said Martin Humphreys, lead transport economist at the World Bank. 

"Major ports need to invest in resilience, new technology, and green infrastructure to ensure the stability of global markets and the sustainability of the shipping industry."