Connectivity increases benefit major ports
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has released a quarterly Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (PLSCI), giving ports an index-based liner connectivity score.
Figure 1 shows a tiered list of ports that are in the top-100 most-connected ports, and Figure 2 shows a tiered list of ports that are in the bottom-100 for each quarter across 2006-2024.
The top-10 most-connected ports in 2024-Q4 have seen their average connectivity increase consistently across the analysed period, which accelerated since 2020, increasing the gap to the next 10 ports considerably. The remaining top segments have all seen increases, but they are relatively marginal compared to the top-10 most-connected ports. What this shows, is that the most-connected ports are getting increasingly more connected on average.
Across each of the analysed tiers at the bottom of the connectivity index, we see a decline in the average connectivity, spanning most of the analysed period. So much so that the difference in the average connectivity between each tier in the least-connected 100 ports is now marginal.
The trend shown here points to a network setup which is increasingly reliant on a smaller set of major hub ports, where smaller ports are increasingly relegated to feeder services, reducing their overall liner connectivity score, says an analysis by Sea-Intelligence.
Source: Exim News Service: Copenhagen, Jan. 19