The City of Cape Town is again calling for State-owned Transnet to accelerate initiatives to improve efficiencies at the Port of Cape Town.

South Africa cannot afford a port that underperforms, and all options for structural improvement, including increased private sector involvement in operations, need to be considered and enabled, the city says.

Cape Town again made the call after the port was ranked last in the latest World Bank Container Port Performance Index (CPPI), says City of Cape Town Economic Growth MMC Alderman James Vos.

Transnet has made investments to improve port operations, but this has not been reflected in the latest global port rankings.

While there are encouraging signs that reforms and partnerships are beginning to yield improvements elsewhere in the country’s port network, Cape Town continues to struggle with operational inefficiencies that undermine South Africa’s competitiveness and affect the ability of exporters to get their products to international markets, he says.

Additionally, encouraging steps have been taken by port authorities to improve efficiencies, including requests for proposals to operate the liquid bulk terminal and a cold storage terminal.

The city will continue to provide its full support to port authorities in reforming port inefficiencies, says Vos.

However, businesses, exporters and investors indicate that the performance of the Port of Cape Town remains one of the biggest constraints on economic growth in the Western Cape, he says.

A more efficient Port of Cape Town could unlock about R6-billion in additional exports, support nearly 20 000 jobs, generate more than R1.6-billion in additional tax revenue and add meaningful growth to the provincial economy, according to research commissioned by the Western Cape government.

Cape Town is also strategically located on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.

“Our port should be a competitive advantage that strengthens our position as a leading hub for trade and investment. Instead, it too often acts as a bottleneck that constrains growth and limits opportunity.

“Cape Town should have one of the most efficient ports on the African continent,” says Vos.

The city supports greater private sector involvement at the port and reforms that bring investment, expertise and innovation into the system. It also supports measures to improve efficiency, reduce delays and strengthen South Africa’s competitiveness in global markets.

Meanwhile, the World Bank CPPI 2025 report shows that the global average CPPI deteriorated slightly relative to 2024, which indicates longer vessel time in port on average.

This overall movement reflects a combination of regional patterns, and the aggregate result is not driven by a uniform global shift, but by offsetting developments across regions and individual ports, with external shocks and structural factors shaping outcomes differently across locations, the World Bank says in the report.

Vessel time in port in 2025 continued to show clear regional and income‑related differences. Ports in upper-middle-income and high-income economies maintained shorter turnaround times on average, supported by stronger infrastructure, higher crane intensity, more advanced digital systems and better coordination among stakeholders.

Several ports in upper-middle-income countries, particularly in East and South Asia, again outperformed many high-income peers, which reflects export orientation, inter-port competition and sustained investment momentum.

Ports in Europe and North America continued their recovery from earlier disruption but some remained affected by congestion, labour constraints and hinterland bottlenecks.

Ports in sub-Saharan Africa generally recorded longer vessel times in port, often linked to import-dominated trade structures, capacity constraints and limited competition.

The leading ports that improved between 2020 and 2025 were Port Elizabeth, Khalifa Bin Salman Port, Posorja, Göteborg and Muhammad Bin Qasim. The top ports that improved in 2025 compared with 2024 are Durban, Freeport, Ngqura, Cristobal and Manzanillo.

These ports represent a range of regions and starting conditions, which indicates that improvement is achievable through different pathways, including capacity expansion and operational improvements, the report notes.

Further, supply chain stress has a measurable, negative impact on port performance. When schedules become unreliable, and demand volatility increases, vessels arrive at ports out of sequence and often in clusters. This reduces terminals’ ability to plan berth allocation, labour deployment, and yard operations.

Even ports with high baseline capability experience longer turnaround times when arrival patterns become irregular. The result is longer waiting times at anchor and berth, which lowers measured performance.

“Digitalisation supports both efficiency and resilience. The ability to share reliable, timely information on vessel arrivals, berth status, yard conditions, and landside flows improves predictability and reduces the amplification of shocks.

“Digital tools that improve planning and sequencing help ports shift from reactive to anticipatory operations, which is critical in managing volatile arrival patterns,” the World Bank states.

Additionally, the performance of the Port of Cape Town illustrates how vessel turnaround times can worsen even when broader congestion indicators fluctuate. Persistent weather-related disruption, combined with equipment reliability issues, led to high variability in ship times in port, despite periods of easing supply chain stress.

This deterioration was accompanied by a decline in berth use, which suggests that vessels increasingly accumulated time outside productive berth operations.

In response, Cape Town has introduced a predictive wind model developed with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to reduce weather-related disruptions, a helicopter piloting service to improve ship access during high swells, and a digital technology platform for cargo planning.

The port’s CPPI trajectory underlines how structural exposure to external conditions can dominate performance outcomes, independent of global demand cycles, the World Bank says.