Improving the competitiveness of South Asia’s container ports is critical to maintaining trade growth in the region and fostering its fast economic growth.
· A new World Bank report finds the region made strides in improving the performance of its container ports, but still had room for improvement, particularly in its lagging ports.
· The study recommends that the countries -- Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – improve governance of port authorities, build greater private sector participation and create a more competitive environment in the port sector.
Washington - South Asia has had outstanding economic growth in the last two decades and could grab a bigger share of international trade, but inefficiencies in its ports threaten to hinder progress and stop it from matching other regions such as East Asia, a new World Bank report shows.
While some South Asian countries took great strides to improve performance at container ports amid a worldwide boom in sea-borne trade, the region as a whole has lagged and its ports are seen as expensive and slow, the report said.
The comprehensive World Bank study of the status, structure and deficiencies of the region’s container ports found that if ports in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan had been as efficient as those of Sri Lanka it could have cut shipping costs by up to nearly 9 percent, boosting the value of the region’s exports by up to 7 percent.
As China is shifting out of labour-intensive sectors such as apparel, South Asia has the potential to capture a growing share of the global market. This may in turn attract more foreign direct investment, increase trade and create new jobs for South Asia’s growing labour force.