Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Based Study of Major Sea Ports of India

India is one of the biggest peninsulas in the world. A major part of trading, both by volume and value, is done through maritime transport in India. There are twelve major government owned ports that service this transport. Efficiency evaluation of these ports is crucial for the operators and managers to analyse their performance for further improvements. The present study uses the non parametric efficiency evaluation technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the performance of these ports for the year 2019-2020. Technical, Pure Technical, scale and super efficiencies have been evaluated for the twelve major ports. Three out of twelve ports turned out to be efficient when evaluated by using the constant returns to scale model and six turned to be efficient when evaluated using variable returns to scale model. In order to give benchmarks to the inefficient ports, potential improvements in the input and output variables have also been discussed. It was observed that Kamarajar port in Tamil Nadu is the best performer while Mormugao in Goa is the least.