São Paulo – In 2014, Morocco climbed to the 16th position in the worldwide Liner Shipping Connectivity Index of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). Before the Tanger-Med Port went into operation, in 2007, the country placed 84th in the ranking. The information has been released this Friday (6th) by local port authority the Tangier Mediterranean Special Agency.
With this new ranking, the statement says, Morocco now tops the shipping connectivity index for Africa and Latin America. Countries ranking immediately higher than Morocco include the United Arab Emirates (15th), Italy (14th), Spain (13th) and France (12th).
Unctad’s connectivity index measures how well countries are connected to global shipping networks. The port authority statement says the index is regularly used to assess countries’ competitiveness levels.
The index keeps track of five aspects of the maritime transport industry: number of ships, their container-carrying capacity, maximum vessel size, number of services and number of companies that deploy container ships in a country’s ports.
Currently, the Tanger-Med Port is connected with 161 ports in 63 countries in the five continents.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
