The indices
The LSCI (Liner Shipping Connectivity Index) measures how well each economy is integrated into global liner shipping networks for containers, based on five components: number of shipping companies, regular services, deployed ships, TEU capacity and size of the largest ship. The PLSCI (Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index) applies the same logic to each individual port. Both are produced by UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development).
The monthly LSCI
Since 2026 UNCTAD has also published a monthly LSCI by economy, with the same components and on the same scale as the quarterly index, so the two series can be read together. It helps to spot changes in routes and port calls before they reach the quarterly figure. It is truly monthly from January 2023; from 2006 to 2022 UNCTAD only gives one value per quarter (February, May, August and November), so there is no month-on-month change for those years. There is no monthly version by port: the PLSCI remains quarterly. It is published around the middle of each month and loaded into this section the week it comes out.
Base and interpretation
The indices are expressed relative to the world average for the first quarter of 2023 = 100. A port with an index of 500 is five times better connected than that average. The index compares connectivity, not traffic: a port can handle fewer tonnes than another and still be better connected.
Coverage and updates
Since 2006 the series has come to include 1,342 ports and 191 economies, but that is the cumulative coverage of the historical record, not that of any given quarter: UNCTAD drops ports that no longer have regular calls, so each quarter only part of that catalogue has data. The coverage figures shown on the pages of this section always refer to the current quarter, and when a profile shows a value from a discontinued series this is flagged. The data are loaded into El Estrecho Digital's own data warehouse directly from the UNCTADstat API; world and national rankings and year-on-year changes are calculated on the full dataset at each load.
Revisions
UNCTAD occasionally revises values already published and, when the index base changes, the entire historical series is recalculated. The data warehouse behind this section keeps a record of those changes, so any published figure can be reproduced and explained later.
Names and groupings
UNCTAD publishes names in English without accents; this section restores the local names of ports (Málaga, A Coruña, Sevilla…) and shows country names in the reader's language. Ports are identified by their UN/LOCODE.
The “Mediterranean” grouping is editorial and, since the source does not classify ports by sea, it is defined by a closed list of UN/LOCODEs rather than by country: it includes ports on the Mediterranean and its inner seas —Adriatic, Aegean, Ionian, Marmara, Levantine and Alboran— plus those of the Strait of Gibraltar, and excludes the Atlantic ports of Spain, France and Morocco, the Canary Islands, the Turkish Black Sea ports and the Egyptian and Israeli Red Sea ports. “Europe” is built from coastal countries, except for the Russian Pacific and Siberian Arctic ports, which are excluded.
Production
This section is an editorial product of El Estrecho Digital based on public UNCTAD data. Any discrepancy with the official publications is the responsibility of this publication.
Indicators · EED Data