Public and Private Investment in the Port Sector in Mexico, 2000-2010： A Study Through Data Envelopment Analysis

Knowing the level of efficiency of investment applied in ports of Mexico is relevant information for the design of port policies that contribute to its development and thus to greater freight movement. The objective of this paper is to analyze the technical efficiency obtained from International Mexican Ports, through the use of the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis （DEA）. It uses data regarding public and private investment in ports applied during the period 2000-2010 and its influence on the number of Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit （TEU）. Because it has been applied the DEA-CCR （the linear programming model） model input oriented, thus not only the efficiency is calculated in ports, but benchmarking is also obtained to determine the efficient ports that serve as reference to those who were found to be inefficient. The results obtained showed that Manzanillo and Progreso were the most efficient ports. On the other hand, the ports that were not efficient for any of the years reviewed were Mazatlan and Lazaro Cardenas. Generally, public investment has been increasing over the period, and public policies are not designed to allow the ports to have an international projection.