Latin American and Caribbean ports technical efficiency improving

However, according to the report’s authors, there was also some “encouraging results” to be found at the region’s 63 container ports: their technical efficiency improved by 39% between 1999 and 2009.

Nevertheless, this is not a view shared by the World Economic Forum, which claims that Latin American and Caribbean ports offer some of the worst quality to be found at ports worldwide. Using its scale of measurement, ports in the region scored an average of 4 out of a possible 7, whereas those in the Middle East and Africa were awarded 4.4-4.5. Only sub-Saharan Africa, with a score of 3.9, did worse.

BID prefers to measure efficiency by looking at how ports make use of their infrastructure, such as quays, cranes and staking yards, to meet the demands of container traffic. This measurement is preferred since Latin American and Caribbean ports do not issue statistics, for example, on how long it takes for an export container to be loaded on board vessel.