Forecasting Container Throughput of Singapore Port Considering Various Exogenous Variables Based on SARIMAX Models

In this study, we propose a model to forecast container throughput for the Singapore port, one of the busiest ports globally. Accurate forecasting of container throughput is critical for efficient port operations, strategic planning, and maintaining a competitive advantage. Using monthly container throughput data of the Singapore port from 2010 to 2021, we develop a Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Variables (SARIMAX) model. For the exogenous variables included in the SARIMAX model, we consider the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price and China’s export volume, alongside the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic measured through global confirmed cases. The predictive performance of the SARIMAX model was evaluated against a diverse set of benchmark methods, including the Holt–Winters method, linear regression, LASSO regression, Ridge regression, ECM (Error Correction Mechanism), Support Vector Regressor (SVR), Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and Prophet. This comparative analysis was conducted by forecasting container throughput for the year 2022. Results indicated that the SARIMAX model, particularly when incorporating WTI prices and China’s export volume, outperformed other models in terms of forecasting accuracy, such as Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE).