The World Bank has ranked Djibouti’s ports at the bottom of its 2023 Container Port Performance Index, and South African operator Transit is not happy with the low rating either.
At the beginning of this June, the World Bank ranked container terminals in Djibouti ports 379 out of 405 in the 2023 Container Ports Performance Index, a staggering drop of 353 places in 12 months, which continues to displease the small republic.
President Ismail Omar Guelleh has criticised the report’s authors, accusing them in a speech on June 16 of indulging in “absurdity by publishing information that contradicts reality”.
What is even more worrying for officials in Djibouti is that the “port champion” in the Horn of Africa has fallen far behind its main regional competitor, “Somali’s Berbera,” which ranked 106th, 38 places higher than the previous year.
Somaliland’s port now leads all sub-Saharan African ports, replacing Djibouti, which held first place for the past three years.
This year, for the first time, the port of Djibouti was included with Port Sudan to be included in the ports of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent (in the category of West, Central and South Asia), a move that World Bank experts could not explain, while Berbera and Mogadishu remain included in the ports of the continent.
The head of the Ports and Free Zones Authority in Djibouti, Abu Bakr Omar Hadi, says, “This grave geographical error casts doubt on the credibility of the study as a whole, and raises many questions about the methodology used.”
The geographic inaccuracy is not the most important issue for Djibouti port officials who were quick to express their “discontent.” Aboubaker Omar Hadi does not understand the reasons for the low rating, even though “the Doraleh Container Terminal Management Company’s facilities had a great year, handling a total of 827,672 TEUs.”with an increase 40% in one year, mainly due to transshipment activities.”
AndAs in previous years, the Port of Djibouti has continued to work to improve its performance, its officials say. “We are achieving an average of 120 container movements per hour, which is exceptional in Africa,” says the head of Djibouti Ports, noting that the time it takes a truck to pass through the terminal is just over an hour.
The general manager of Doraleh Container Terminal Management Company, Abdullah Adou Sejad, admits that “even with the arrival of 4 new gantry cranes at the terminal at the end of 2023, such a classification cannot be explained even if the process of their installation actually affected activities during those few months.”
Tension in the Red Sea
Has the current situation in the Red Sea – taking into account the times ships pass through the port – affected this classification?
The World Bank made this clearer in a press release published on June 18 following a visit by a delegation led by the bank’s Global Director for Transport, Nicolas Peltier-Thiberge, who said that “this downgrade is largely due to external factors.”
The World Bank statement says, “Factors are independent of the port and can be linked, for example, to the security situation in the Red Sea and the exceptional and additional verification, inspection and licensing procedures required for shipments destined for Yemen, which were strengthened as of September 2023.” It adds, “With regard to the performance of the port… Djibouti This decrease must be interpreted with caution.”
According to the UN resolution adopted in 2015, which requires goods destined for Yemen to pass through Djibouti before arriving at the port of Hodeidah, it could provide the beginnings of an explanation, given that it imposes numerous inspections upon arrival at the port, on its berth, and upon departure.
“There is no reason why we should feel this in 2023 more than we have in the past eight years,” the Djiboutians say. “If so, the World Bank should not take it into account because the port is responding to a request from the international community.”
“These factors combined could justify a slight drop of about 30 positions, but no more than that,” port officials added.
Abdullah Adou Sejad says he is fairly confident of the reaction of shipowners and other users “who know and appreciate our ports.”
Transit, the company that runs the port, is also not happy with the rating, because Djibouti is not the only country that has questioned the work of the study’s authors. South Africans have also pointed out several errors, which they complained about to World Bank experts on June 10.
In a statement issued on the 18th of the same month, the World Bank sought to provide reassurance and “reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the port of Djibouti,” which it said was “known for its performance and importance for global trade and communication with the African continent.”
