How a week is counted
A week runs from Saturday to Friday, Dhaka time, and is named by the Saturday it starts on.
PMESC Desk
How the Freight Index is worked out
Every number on the index comes from rules we can show you. Here they are, in plain words.
Where the quotes come from
PMESC records carrier and forwarder quotes, its own rates and prices a partner passes on. Each quote carries an amount, whether it is all-in or ocean freight only, the kind of source, and a private note.
What happens when there are too few quotes
A lane shows a rate only with at least three quotes that week. With fewer, it says “Not enough quotes this week” — no estimate, no interpolation.
The median, not the average
Every included quote is sorted from low to high and the middle one is used. With an even count, the lower of the two middle quotes is used. The median means one unusual quote cannot move the number on its own.
Amounts are stored as whole US cents and shown as whole dollars.
Leaving a quote out
A quote can be left out only with a written reason — there is no silent exclusion. Excluded quotes do not count, and every exclusion is written to the staff activity log.
When a rate looks out of line
A quote below half or above twice the lane's week median gets an amber “check this” mark. The system never excludes it by itself — a person looks, writes a reason and decides.
Change and the lane index
The change % compares a lane with its own rate in the last published edition; if either side is missing, nothing is shown.
Lane index = the lane's rate ÷ its base rate × 100. The base is the lane's rate in the first published edition that had it, so a lane's first published reading is 100.
The composite
The composite is the average of the lane indices that are available, to two decimal places. A lane without a rate that week is left out of the average, never counted as zero.
Two people publish
Whoever prepares an edition cannot publish it — publishing needs an admin or sub-admin. Every prepare, publish and withdraw is written to the staff activity log.
Published editions never change
To fix a mistake, the edition is withdrawn with a written reason: that week shows a public notice and its figures are hidden. A corrected edition is then prepared for the same week.
What is never published
The private note on a quote, and who supplied it. Public pages show the rate and the number of quotes — nothing about the source.
How quotes get in
The desk adds quotes by hand, or pastes a CSV file with the columns week_start, lane_code, amount_usd, basis, source_kind, note. If any row is wrong the whole file is rejected and the row is named.
Which lanes are shown
Only lanes the desk has switched on. Once a lane has quotes, its code and container type are fixed so the series keeps meaning the same thing.
Indicative, not a quotation
The index is an indicative market level. PMESC confirms a real price for your shipment.