The Republic of Djibouti has rejected as “absurd” the World Bank’s port ranking index that saw the Port of Djibouti drop from 29th place in 2022 to 379 in its 2023 report.
“This decline of over 350 places in a single year is obviously absurd and does not reflect any tangible reality on the ground,” said the government of the Republic of Djibouti in a statement.
“The Republic of Djibouti strongly rejects the conclusions of this report which causes unjustified harm to our country and our facilities. This comes at a time when we have been facing complex operating conditions since early 2024, due to international tensions,” the government said.
The government added that the data the researchers had relied on was erroneous, and claimed it had in fact recorded productivity of 120 movements per hour for docked vessels, and that it had achieved growth of more than 30 per cent between 2022 and 2023.
It said the port’s quays were far from saturated and had a utilisation of just 40 per cent, while there had been no exceptional events that had caused any disruption to the port’s operations during 2022 and 2023.
“The calculation methods used by the experts in this report seem to distort the reality of the port industry. Other world-class ports with high traffic density are downgraded in the ‘ranking’ to the detriment of ports with significantly lower traffic,” said the government.
It also questioned why the Port of Djibouti had been moved from being ranked under the sub-Saharan Africa region to West, Central and South Asia in the 2023 report.
