Relative Efficiency Analysis of major Container Ports in Middle East using DEA-AP Approach

This study aims to benchmark the efficiency of major Container seaports in Middle East and investigate the changes in the pure technical efficiency, and nature of returns to scale using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method over the period 2011 to 2013. Firstly the Relative Efficiency of Ports are evaluated via one basic model of DEA namely BCC-O. Then ports are ranked based on the achieved results. To ranking ports which had 1 score efficiency, Anderson-peterson method is used. According to the results of this study, port of Imam Khomeini show relatively low operational efficiency and ports of Bushehr, Jebel Ali, Khorfakkan and Alexandria have the highest score of efficiency. In the final section, suggestions are proposed for the existing problems in port efficiency.