Port Qasim ranked 5th among world’s 20 fastest-growing ports

KARACHI: Port Qasim has been ranked fifth among the world’s 20 fastest-improving container ports over the 2020–2025 period.

According to the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) 2025, jointly published by the World Bank Group and S&P Global Market Intelligence, the port Qasim CPPI score climbed to 60.1 in 2025 from a baseline of 8 in 2020, a 52-point gain.

Port Elizabeth in South Africa posted an 80-point gain that tops this year’s list of most-improved ports. Khalifa Bin Salman Port in Bahrain, Posorja in Ecuador, and Göteborg in Sweden are also in the top five port improvers alongside Port Qasim, which was promoted to fifth rank in CPPI 2025 from ninth position in CPPI 2024.

The overall 2025 port efficiency rankings are led by Chinese ports. Four of five port efficiency rankings have been dominated by the Chinese ports, including Fuzhou, Dalian, Mawan, and Chiwan, while Salalah port in Oman is ranked third among them.

In the overall 2025 standings, Port Qasim sits 56th out of 400 ports assessed worldwide, with a berth utilization rate of 78 percent recorded across 371 port calls during the year.

The five-year rise was uneven. Port Qasim’s score moved from 8 in 2020 to 43 in 2021, then fell to 31 in 2022 and 22 in 2023, before recovering to 43 in 2024 and surging to 60.1 in 2025.

The pattern points to a port whose performance has swung with operating conditions rather than improved on a steady reform track, even though the five-year endpoint places it among the index’s biggest gainers.

That 60.1 score is well above the 36.9 average for the Indian Subcontinent region in this year’s index. It also puts Port Qasim ahead of Karachi Port, which posted a CPPI 2025 score of 45.7 and a global rank of 69th. On both score and rank, Port Qasim now leads Karachi port, having overtaken it in this year’s CPPI report.

The report does not explain what drove Port Qasim’s jump the way it does for ports such as Durban or Dar es Salaam, which receive dedicated case-study treatment elsewhere in the index.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026