UNCTADstat Maritime Transport

What you can build

• Reset lane lead times when time in port moves

  The operator reads median time in port for container ships in the economies your inbound freight passes through. When a new release moves it, the operator proposes a revised lead-time assumption for those lanes, with the table code and release date attached.

  With Lead-Time Drift, Inbound Delay

• Brief the quarter on connectivity where you source

  Each LSCI release, the operator lists the economies you source from, their index change over the previous period, and their bilateral index with your destination economy. It proposes a paragraph for the board pack or the demand outlook for you to edit.

  With Board Pack, Demand Outlook

• Compare candidate sourcing countries on port performance

  For a shortlist of economies, the operator pulls port calls, median time in port, largest container ship received, and seaborne trade volumes into one benchmark table and proposes it as a sourcing brief.

  With Site Benchmark

Requirements

• A free UNCTADstat account to obtain the Client ID and API key shown under My Home
• The table code for each series, for example US.PortCalls, US.LSCI_M, US.MerchantFleet, or US.SeaborneTrade
• Economy codes and dimension codes for the $filter clause, such as CommercialMarket/Code for the port-call tables
• Network reach to unctadstat.unctad.org and unctadstat-user-api.unctad.org
• Attribution of United Nations Trade and Development Data Hub as the source when you redistribute the data

Authentication

An UNCTADstat account (UNCTAD, Google, or Microsoft personal sign-in). The Client ID and API key under My Home go in the ClientId and ClientSecret headers of each data API request. CSV export and bulk files need no account.

Limits

• The port-call tables publish group aggregates and only the twenty economies with the most port calls, for 2018 to 2023
• Port-call measures need at least 10 arrivals by at least 5 distinct vessels per economy and market; smaller counts are withheld
• The monthly LSCI is published three months at a time, typically at end-March, June, September, and December; 2006 to 2022 has one month per quarter
• Data API responses arrive as a gzipped CSV built from an OData-style $select, $filter, $orderby, and $compute form; there is no per-row JSON endpoint

Questions and answers

Do I need an account to read UNCTADstat maritime data?

Not for the Data Centre, the CSV export, or the bulk file. The data API needs a logged-in account: the Client ID and API key appear under My Home, and each request sends them in the ClientId and ClientSecret headers. Accounts can use an UNCTAD, Google, or Microsoft personal sign-in.

Where do the port-call figures come from?

UNCTAD derives them from automatic identification system (AIS) data fused with port mapping by MarineTraffic, covering ships of 1000 GT. Only arrivals are counted. Passenger and roll-on/roll-off ships are excluded from time-in-port calculations. The tables use median time in port because averages are pulled up by long stays.

How is the Liner Shipping Connectivity Index scaled?

Six components: scheduled ship calls per week, annual deployed TEU capacity, number of regular services, number of liner companies, the largest ship in TEU, and the number of directly connected countries. Each is divided by the cross-country average for February 2023, averaged, and multiplied by 100. Sources are MDS Transmodal schedules.