IMF PortWatch

IMF PortWatch is a maritime trade-monitoring platform built jointly by the International Monetary Fund, Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Delft University of Technology, launched in November 2023 and since adopted by the United Nations. It combines satellite-based AIS vessel-tracking data with big-data analytics to publish indicators, updated weekly, for over 2,065 ports and 28 global chokepoints, including the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. Access is free: the underlying datasets sit on the UN's Humanitarian Data Exchange, and the platform itself runs as a public beta at IMF.org. Because commercial shipping data typically lags by weeks, PortWatch has become the reference dataset traders, policymakers and researchers cite first when a chokepoint disruption breaks, from Red Sea attacks to the Panama Canal drought and the 2026 Hormuz stand-down.

Four days after the 29 June verbal stand-down over the Strait of Hormuz, IMF PortWatch data showed traffic still FAR below normal: 27-43 vessel transits a day in early July 2026 against a pre-crisis baseline near 84, the clearest sign the strait had not genuinely reopened. That trend-versus-headline gap sharpened on 2 July, when 35 tankers cleared the strait in a single day, the first daily count back inside the pre-war-typical range, yet PortWatch's own 3 July reading still put transits at roughly a third of pre-crisis levels. It is that gap between one strong daily count and the slower-moving weekly trend, not the headline number, that the energy-markets desk uses to judge whether Hormuz has actually reopened.