Technical Efficiency in the Container Terminals in Mexico, 1982-2010: Through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) 159
presents an analysis of the efficiency of container termi-
nals in Mexico, which has not been done in the way pre-
sented in this work, one of the main differences is the
study period (1982-2010) which includes both stage
where it was managed entirely by the government as the
stage where there was already interventionism on the part
of private. On the other hand besides indicating the level
of efficiency of ports showing pure, scale and global ef-
ficiency, we present a benchmarking analysis in order to
identify those ports that are inefficient and they were
compared to other ports with similar characteristics and
that are efficient and finally with slack analysis shows
the number of inputs that must reduce to be more effi-
cient.
5. Conclusions
We have introduced the measurement of global technical
efficiency Mexican ports in the period 1982-2010 , which
in turn can be decomposed into pure technical efficiency
(PTE) and scale efficiency (ES).
In this research, we work the CRS and VRS DEA
model of output oriented. Input needs to consider quay
length and the number of workers, while output needs to
consider the number of containers handled annually. The
hypothesis is true, since the results show that on averag e
the ports have a global low technical efficiency because
most ports show a reduced scale efficiency.
Tuxpan and Veracruz were ports that had a higher
global technical efficiency in the year 1982. This was
due to the fact that production scale remained at its
maximum scale operating efficiently as shown in Table
2, as well as its resources properly optimized, thereby
realizing pure technical efficiency. The port that is char-
acterized by having the lowest efficiency in the period
was Progreso, despite having a high level of pure techni-
cal efficiency. In 2010, Manzanillo and Lazaro Carden as
were ports with the great global technical efficiency
while Tuxpan was the one that obtained less efficiency,
mainly because in that year they moved only 18 contain-
ers.
With Benchmarking analysis, one is able to identify
efficient ports that served as reference to the inefficient,
with the ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas refer-
enced in the year 2010. In Slacks analysis, there must be
50% of the ports for this year that had a surplus of work-
ers, making it necessary to rethink hiring, where profiles
are evaluated as indicated for the management of these
terminals, and also to have ongoing training in techno-
logical areas as is true today the port of Manzanillo.
It is generally observed that the ports of Mexico are
inefficient mainly due to the poor results on the effi-
ciency of scale, which tells us that they are at the optimal
scale of production. As a matter of public policy, it is
necessary that they encourage that increased containers
are moved through investment policies for the procure-
ment of infrastructure and equipment that meet the re-
quired demand for there to be a better scale of production
and in turn to have a global efficiency technique.
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