Stochastic Frontier Analysis of Selected Nigerian Seaports Container Throughput’s Efficiency

Abstract

This paper measures efficiency of container throughputs across the selected terminals within the selected seaports using input-output efficiency ratio. For a terminal to be productive does not mean it is efficient. There are forms of efficiencies as allocative, economic and technical. All round pass mark of efficiency in this regard has to do with minimum time spent within the system of a port for a particular transaction. This research has been able to determine the efficiencies of container throughputs across terminals within five major seaports in Nigeria with collected secondary data (2012-2022) from Nigerian Bureau of Statistics on container cargo throughputs for Apapa, Tin Can Island, Onne, Calabar, Port Harcourt and Warri terminals. The total inputs containers throughputs in (tonnes) from different terminals within a port were aggregated together to constitute an input for terminals within a seaport. The input variables are number of ships per annum, cargo handling equipment (cranes) (TPC) and dock workers (ngh). Stochastic Frontier Analysis with the aid of R-software has been used to analyse the collected data It was observed that terminals at Onne are most efficient followed by Calabar. Tin can Island terminal efficiency was a slightly higher than that of Apapa as both had a little above average mean efficiency value. Warri terminals are the least while Rivers was not considered for unavailability of data. There are other factors responsible for inefficiencies of mostly the western terminals at Apapa, Tin Can and Warri Eastern terminals which can be investigated further in future research.