A benchmarking study of Indian seaports

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the operational and financial performances of the major Indian seaports to help derive useful insights to improve their performance.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology has been used with the help of data collected on the 13 major seaports of India. The first stage of the DEA captured the operational efficiencies, while the second stage the financial performance.

Findings

A window analysis over a period of three years revealed that no port was able to score an overall average efficiency of 100 per cent. The study identified the better performing units among their peers in both the stages. The contrasting results of the study with the traditional operational and financial performance measures used by the ports helped to derive useful insights.

Research limitations/implications

The data used in the study were majorly limited to the available sources in the public domain. Also, the study was limited to the major seaports which are under the Government of India and no comparisons were carried out with other local or international ports.

Practical implications

There is a need to prioritize investments and improvement efforts where they are most needed, instead of following a generalized approach. Once the benchmark ports are identified, the port authorities and other relevant stakeholders should work in detail on the factors causing inefficiencies, for possible improvements in performance.

Originality/value

This paper carried out a two-stage DEA that helped to derive useful insights on operational efficiency and financial performance of the India seaports. A combination of the financial and operational parameters, along with a comparison of the DEA results with the traditional measures, provided a different perspective on the Indian seaport performance. Considering the scarcity of research papers reported in the literature on DEA-based benchmarking studies of seaports in the Indian context, it has the potential to attract future research in this field.

Citation

George, S.A. and Tumma, A.C. (2020), "A benchmarking study of Indian seaports", Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 88-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGOSS-05-2019-0037