¹Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. E-mails: lrrios@vetorial.net; acgmacada@ea.ufrgs.br

Abstract

Maritime transport is extremely important for the world economy, and similarly for the Brazilian economy. The objective of this paper is to analyse the relative efficiency of operations in container terminals of Mercosur in the years of 2002, 2003 and 2004, using the data envelopment analysis technique in a model BCC, with five inputs (number of cranes, number of berths, number of employees, terminal area, amount of yard equipment) and two outputs (TEUs handled and average number of containers handled per hour/ship). The units of analysis are 15 Brazilian, six Argentinean and two Uruguayan container terminals. The analysis shows that 60% of the terminals were efficient in the 3-year period. Benchmarking analysis of Zarate, Rio Cubatão and Teconvi revealed that those terminals served as reference for inefficient terminals more often than other terminals.