“The aim of the CPPI is to provide an objective measure of container port performance, identify global or local trends in maritime container trade efficiency, and highlight where vessel time in port could be improved,” the CPPI 2025 says in its Executive Summary. A good question therefore is whether or not it can be relied upon for that purpose.
The quick and simple answer is “yes”.
The longer, more complex, answer is, “yes, you can, really”.
Industry executives, analysts, decision-makers and elected officials absolutely can rely on the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) to tell us what’s happening in the global supply chain. We know this for several reasons.
The story it tells is highly compatible with other internationally regarded indices that are produced by transport experts. Researchers compared the CPPI with other major indices – the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), the Global Supply Chain Stress Index (produced by the World Bank), and the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (produced by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange – a non-profit institution, set up by the Chinese Ministry of Transport and the Shanghai Municipal Government).
These indices track related, but distinct, phenomena that show us what is going on in the world of transport and logistics. The Pressure Index looks at a range of data including the Baltic Dry Index, the Harpex Index, airfreight costs from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and various parts of the Purchasing Managers Index – which looks at manufacturing across major economies. The Stress Index takes AIS data as supplied by Marine Traffic, with input from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index. And the Shanghai Index is compiled from actual freight price data supplied by 22 liner shipping companies and 26 shipper / freight forwarder companies active in the market.
Clear & synchronous
World Bank researchers found that these other indices show “clear and synchronous” patterns with the CPPI. Or, in other words, as these other indices show a given pattern of change within the global logistics sector, then the CPPI clearly shows complementary changes happening over the same period.
So, we have three other major indices, from separate world-renowned institutions, using separate methodologies, and these reports are generated using other globally accepted indices and actual, live, freight data. All three of these indices separately suggest mutually compatible explanations of how the world economy / transport economy is doing. And the CPPI contains results that are compatible with those other three reports.
Secondly, we can consider the CPPI data itself. According to S&P, it covers at least 400 box ports, and 1,000 box terminals. It is gathered from 3,650 terrestrial AIS stations around the world, over 4,200 ships, and from two providers of satellite data, and it has been gathered over at least eight years. It is fair to describe that data as a wide and deep set of data collated from real-time (or close to it), real-life industry-interactions gathered across jurisdictions, geographies, time, and sub-sectors of the global container ocean transport industry.
Thirdly, we can also consider that the World Bank is a globally regarded and expert economic analysis institution that employs internationally leading transport economists. We can further consider that the data for the CPPI is gathered by S&P Global – a major international entity, which, like the World Bank, employs global quality analysts.
Ok, a key concession here: an argument isn’t well supported because it is asserted by an expert. It is only well supported if its conclusions follow logically from its premises and if it is factually correct. But the fact that the World Bank – an elite economic analysis institution – has done this report ought to lead to an inference that the CPPI probably is a well supported report, especially when the other supporting aspects of the report are taken into account too.
To summarise: we have four reports, compiled by different sets of world-leading transport economists, employed by different globally regarded and elite economic analysis institutions that are based in different geographies and come from different socio-cultural traditions, using four (or more) different methodologies (the CPPI itself has two different methodologies in it), and much of the analysis is based on real market data (freight rates as reported by people involved in the freight-deal) and ship-position data (AIS).
An overwhelming inference
All of those factors ought to raise an overwhelming conclusion that the CPPI is well-supported, is evidence-based, and, in an imperfect world, is the currently best available guide to container port performance.
Let’s consider the counter-factual for a minute. If it is reasonable to dismiss the CPPI – as its opponents would have you believe – then we must believe that a lot of elite expert transport economists working independently and separately, in different places, at different times, in different institutions, in different socio-cultural traditions, managed to get similar things wrong in a similar way so as to produce an ecosystem of similarly wrong reports which are mutually supportive in their wrongness. It’s possible … but it seems unlikely.
It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that remarks which pour scorn on, or are dismissive of the CPPI, are simply not credible without overwhelming evidence in support. Such critics ought to put up evidence to back up their claims.
We should see such comments for what they are: rhetoric without support or evidence.
That is not sound argumentation.
That is noise.
Disregard.
