Chattogram Port Retains 68th Global Ranking Despite 4.1% Container Growth

Dwaipayan Barua, Chattogram — Chattogram Port has retained its 68th position among the world's 100 busiest container ports for the second consecutive year, despite handling 4.1 percent more containers in 2025 than in the previous year — a ranking that conceals a widening gap between Bangladesh's principal seaport and its faster-growing global competitors.

London-based shipping journal Lloyd's List published the ranking in its special report titled "Lloyd's List: One Hundred Ports 2026" on Saturday, based on container traffic data from seaports worldwide in 2025. The ranking is based solely on container throughput volumes rather than service quality, port performance, or dwell time — but container handling remains a critical indicator of a country's external trade activity, reflecting volumes of industrial raw materials and high-value manufactured exports moving through the port.

📊 Container Volume Up, Ranking Flat

According to the Lloyd's List report, Chattogram Port handled 3.41 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers in 2025, up from 3.27 million TEUs in 2024 — a year-on-year rise of 4.1 percent. Despite the absolute increase, the port's rank on the global list remained unchanged because the world's top 100 ports collectively saw container traffic grow 6.3 percent in 2025, meaning Chattogram's growth rate lagged behind the global average.

Lloyd's List noted in its publication that despite limited growth at Chattogram, major investments by APM Terminals, MSC, and Red Sea Gateway are reshaping the future of Bangladesh's principal container port. The three foreign operators are involved in developing new terminals and capacity expansion projects that are expected to significantly boost throughput once operational.

🌏 Global Top 10 Dominated by China

China maintained its dominance in global container shipping in 2025, with the top three positions all held by Chinese or Asian ports:

• 🧱 Shanghai Port (China) — 55.5 million TEUs (+6.9% YoY), retained top spot
• 🧱 Singapore Port — 44.6 million TEUs (+8.6% YoY)
• 🧱 Ningbo-Zhoushan Port (China) — 43.8 million TEUs (+11.6% YoY)

Six of the world's top 10 container ports are located in China. Chinese ports alone handled more than 40 percent of the 792.2 million TEUs processed by the world's top 100 ports in 2025. The global top 100 saw a combined 6.3 percent year-on-year increase in container throughput.

🏛 South Asian Comparison

Among South Asian ports, four made the 2026 list:

• 🇮🇳 Mundra Port (India) — ranked 25th
• 🇱🇰 Colombo Port (Sri Lanka) — ranked 29th
• 🇮🇳 Jawaharlal Nehru Port (India) — ranked 30th
• 🇧🇩 Chattogram Port (Bangladesh) — ranked 68th
• 🇵🇰 Karachi Port (Pakistan) — ranked 84th

Chattogram is ranked 16 places ahead of Pakistan's Karachi Port, but well behind the regional leaders in India and Sri Lanka — a gap that reflects both the longer berthing delays at Chattogram and the smaller draft capacity that has historically limited larger vessels from calling at the port.

📜 Historical Performance

Chattogram Port has been a regular feature in the Lloyd's List top 100 since 2009, when it entered the ranking at 95th position. The port's best-ever ranking on the index came in 2020, when it placed 58th based on 2019 container traffic data. Despite continued growth in container volumes since then — including a 4.1 percent rise in 2025 — the port has been unable to regain that peak position, as competitor ports in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have grown faster.

The Lloyd's List ranking was originally compiled by a company called Cargo Systems before being taken over by Containerisation International and, for the past decade, by Lloyd's List. Nearly 99 percent of Bangladesh's seaborne container traffic passes through Chattogram Port, with the remaining approximately 1 percent handled by Mongla Port.

👥 Stakeholder Response

Mohammed Amirul Haque, president of the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told press that a major share of the country's economic activity flows through Chattogram Port. He noted that container handling has continued to increase year after year despite various challenges, and that the growth rate could rise further if the energy crisis is overcome and services at both the port and customs are improved.

"Once the new terminals become operational, the port's container handling capacity will increase further. Beyond container traffic alone, boosting the port's overall capacity is more urgent," Amirul Haque said, referring to the pending investments by APM Terminals, MSC, and Red Sea Gateway.

🚢 Strategic Context

The 68th-place retention comes at a critical juncture for Bangladesh's export economy. With the country's apparel sector facing declining EU demand (down 16.4 percent in H1 2026) and a tightening external environment driven by the US-Iran war's impact on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the throughput resilience at Chattogram is itself a positive signal for the broader trade picture.

However, the lag between Chattogram's 4.1 percent growth and the global 6.3 percent average underscores a structural challenge: without faster capacity expansion, Bangladesh's principal gateway risks slipping further behind regional competitors even as the country's trade volume grows. The investments by APM Terminals, MSC, and Red Sea Gateway — alongside the proposed $550 million Laldia terminal construction with Danish support — are the principal levers through which Chattogram can hope to climb back toward its 2020 peak of 58th place.

The key question for Chattogram now is not simply how to increase container handling, but how to expand capacity faster than its global and regional competitors — before the LDC graduation transition in November 2026 narrows the preferential trade margins that have historically supported Bangladesh's export volumes through the port.