A study on the development of Vietnamese container ports and their relative efficiency

Abstract

Currently, there are very few studies about container ports in Vietnam. Of those that have, several of them evaluate the efficiency of container ports located in the North of Vietnam; others focus on comparing all types of ports in Vietnam with regard to the differences in efficiency scores when applying different methods to evaluate efficiency. There are few studies specifically analyze the whole Vietnamese container ports system or compare Vietnamese container ports with those of other countries in terms of efficiency.

To draw an overall picture about Vietnamese container ports in respect of their development process and their efficiency, firstly HI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) and SSA (shift-share analysis) applied to analyze the concentration trend and shifting in the container ports’ market share; then, 21 major Vietnamese container ports and 7 major Korean container ports are selected to examine their level of efficiency in 2016 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This paper applies both constant return to scale (CRS) and variable return to scale (VRS) to explore the differences among overall technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of container ports under evaluation, also indicate slacks and set the projection for inefficiency ports.