Efficiency analysis of main seaports in Indonesia

Abstract

As Indonesia is an archipelago country, sea transportation plays a very important role. The state-owned enterprises known as PELINDO I-IV, are the main seaport operators in Indonesia. This study measured the efficiency of 10 PELINDO container terminals/ports by using Data envelopment analysis (DEA). The results reveal that three container terminals/ports performed efficiently while seven container terminals/ports performed inefficiently. The inefficiency of a terminal/port is mainly caused by excess resources and deficits in annual container throughput. The inefficient ports/terminals need to increase their scales of operation and redesign management practices for better use of resources. The yard crane is determined to be the main influential variable that affected the efficiency of port/terminal operations. Overall, Terminal Petikemas Surabaya (TPS) achieves the highest technical efficiency with the highest productivity scale. This study demonstrates that some smaller ports with smaller outputs or container throughputs such as Palembang are relatively more efficient than some larger ports with the larger output when managing their resources very well.