The role of ports in international trade of a country cannot be undermined as 90% of the international cargos are transported through sea route. Hence, infrastructural development of ports is of critical importance for a country in order to enhance foreign trade, which in turn contributes substantially to the economic growth of the nation. Thus, the performance of the ports is of critical importance for a country. This paper studies and compares the efficiency of major ports in India. It measures the efficiency in the form of cargo traffic, container vessels traffic, principal commodities trading and the performance of exports as well as imports. A case study methodology is followed in this paper. The growth of efficiency is analyzed through simple growth rate. It was observed that almost all the major ports handled the principal commodities in which, more than 60% were Petroleum, Oil and Lubricant (POL) products. The analysis shows that ports like Mormugoa and Kandla had performed well during the study period. Ports like Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and Visakhapatnam also showed reasonably good efficiency in container vessels traffic and cargo traffic handling during the study period.

The impressive growth rate of India’s GDP has been squarely influenced by burgeoning international trade of the country. As 90% of the international cargo is being handled by the ports of India, as a natural corollary, the volume of traffic handled by the ports are on continuous rise. Of course, the liberalization of economies all over the world has increased the exports and imports of almost all the countries. With India’s GDP growing at over 9% per year and the manufacturing sector enjoying double digit growth rates, the country is currently spending about 13% of GDP on the logistics sector. Different types of cargo are handled at the ports, like dry bulk cargo such as coal, iron ore, liquid bulk cargo, container cargo, crude oil cargo and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Increased usage of container cargo has increased the developments in the port industry. India currently has 12 major ports and 185 minor/intermediate ports spread across the vast coastline of 7,517 km. They handle almost 90% of India’s total foreign trade. The exposure of economies to trade and its related activities gave prominence to the development of ports. Ports and shipping can be considered as the engines of growth for any country. The importance of ports and its related infrastructure plays a vital role in the growth of a nation and its economy. The development of ports is needed in India for its growth and better economy. In today’s globalized economic environment, the patterns of international trade, particularly those of manufactured products, are quite complex and increasingly diverting from stylized neoclassical trade models based on the set of assumptions including perfect competition, constant return-to-scale technologies, costless information, and no external effects. The actual patterns are significantly affected by various institutional factors based on policy interventions by the governments, such as trade and investment policies, or on provision of public goods, both in terms of physical and institutional infrastructure that support production as well as trading activities by private enterprises.

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