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Time & delays

Time & delays answers "where does cargo wait, and who takes longest to release it". It measures the time between stamps: from one country's exit stamp to the next country's entry stamp (the border), and from entry to exit inside a country (the dwell).

Before you start​

  • You need a role that reads the analytics area. See What each role can do.
  • Times are only measured once both stamps exist. A period with no finished crossings has nothing to measure, however many declarations it has.

Open it​

  1. Select Reports, then the Time & delays tab.
  2. Check the Period and the sentence You are reading ….

Time & delays as the Secretariat: median crossing 2.3h, 90th percentile 5.3h, mean dwell 2.0h, 100% discharged on time; the Time at the border table; Time in country; Punctuality by State Party

On the page​

On the pageWhat it is for
Median crossingHalf of all border crossings in the period took less than this, half took more.
90th percentile crossingNine crossings in ten took less than this. It shows how bad the slow tail is.
Mean dwellThe average time a declaration spent inside a country between its entry and exit stamps.
Discharged on timeOf the declarations discharged in the period that had a declared end of transit, the share that arrived before it.
Time at the borderOne row per directed border, slowest tail first. See below.
Time in countryHow long each country holds cargo.
Punctuality by State PartyFor each country, the share of its declarations discharged on time.

Time at the border​

ColumnWhat it holds
BorderThe exit office and the entry office, as country code and station code: KE MAL → UG MAL is Malaba, Kenya, to Malaba, Uganda. The direction matters; each direction is its own row.
Median → 90thA bar from the median to the 90th percentile. A long bar means crossing times vary a lot.
Median, 90thThe two times, in hours (3.9h) or minutes (40m).
CrossingsHow many crossings the times are measured over. A border with 2 crossings says little.
What you see depends on who you are
SecretariatState Party (Tunisia)REC (IGAD)
Borders listedEvery border crossed in AfricaBorders your declarations crossedBorders your members' declarations crossed
Countries in Time in country and PunctualityEvery countryYour countryYour members
Scope pickerNoNoYes

A State Party whose declarations have not crossed a border yet sees No completed crossings in this period., and zeros above it.

SecretariatState PartyREC
Time & delays as the Secretariat with a full Time at the border tableTime & delays as Tunisia: 0m everywhere, no completed crossings, Tunisia 0m in Time in countryTime & delays as IGAD: a 3.1h median crossing above "No completed crossings in this period."

Read the figures​

  1. Read Median crossing and 90th percentile crossing together. A median of 2.3h with a 90th percentile of 5.3h means most crossings are quick but one in ten takes more than twice as long.
  2. In Time at the border, the first rows are the borders with the worst tail. Check Crossings before drawing conclusions from one row.
  3. Use View as table on Time in country or Punctuality by State Party to see every country, not only those that fit in the tile.
  4. For every crossing, one row each, open Time at the border in All reports.
These tiles read whole months

The border and country tiles are stored per month. With a week or a day selected they still read the month around it, as their "Covering …" line says.

Known problems​

A REC sees crossing times for traffic it does not administer

As IGAD, the headline figures read 3.1h median and 5.5h 90th percentile, while the table directly below says No completed crossings in this period. and Time in country is empty. The headline figures come from traffic outside IGAD's administered members. See Reports.

"0m" where nothing was measured

When there were no crossings, the headline figures show 0m instead of a dash. For Tunisia, Median crossing 0m means "nothing measured", not "no waiting".

"Tunisia 0m" is not Tunisia

On the Secretariat's Time in country, the first line reads Tunisia 0m. It is the station code TUN (Tunduma, on the Tanzania–Zambia border) read as the country Tunisia. Because the list is sorted worst first, it sits on top. Some countries (Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania) also appear two or three times with different times and nothing to tell the lines apart.

"Discharged on time" reads 100% while declarations are overdue

Discharged on time only counts declarations that have been discharged. A declaration that is overdue and still open does not lower it. On the development system the tile reads 100% while the Register area lists 114 declarations overdue. Read it together with Overdue now on Register.