I do wish that were true, but seems to be in the realm of fantasy. Undoubtedly, there must have been a "sea-change" in the quality of Chittagong port operations during the time of the last CTG (courtesy the Army or whoever), but "most efficient port in Asia"??
All the people in the trade would have been talking about that. They did'nt.
Chittagong port ranked most efficient in Asia
In the study titled “Benchmarking the Efficiency of Asian Container Ports”, Chittagong port has been ranked first due to efficiency from a total of 69 ports from 17 Asian countries.
Bangladesh holds the first place in the list of 12 ports who were ranked for “super efficiency”, followed by the Zamboanga and General Santos ports in the Philippines in the second and third spots. The other ports in the list include “Xiamen of China, Sihanoukville of Cambodia, Davao of Philippines, Yantian of China, Lianyungang of China, PSA Int of Singapore, Tianjin of China, Mumbai of India, and Guangzhou of China”.
The remaining 47 ports were termed “both scale and technically inefficient”.
Although the report does mention that the Chittagong port is using “existing old and new equipment at its optimum level”, the researchers reached the conclusion after evaluating data from the 69 ports over the past five years. The study was carried out in 2010 and published in the African Journal of Business Management (Vol 5(4), pp 1397-1407) on February 18, 2011.
The UNB reported in Bangladesh: “The study analysed the technical efficiency and scale efficiency of Asian container ports by means of DEA. The analysis shows that the main source of overall technical inefficiency in Asian container ports is due to pure technical inefficiencies rather than scale inefficiencies.”
The study also suggested that “port managers must improve their management practices to favour efficient ways and to meet customer requirements. Ports must enhance their handling activities and computerise container terminal operations.” The next step is to now improve the scale efficiencies.
While this is enough to serve as motivation for the Bangladesh authorities to maintain efficiency at the port, its full potential was seldom realised due to labour issues, political crises and other factors.
Bangladesh: Chittagong port ranked most efficient in Asia | Asian Correspondent
