Most economic activities require transportation of goods or people. Production activities require transportation to supply inputs and distribute outputs. Consumption activities also require transportation, households make trips to buy and have fun and sell production factors at their disposal. For this reason, in the economic literature, there is a very close relationship between the concepts of production, consumption, exchange and trade with transportation, and therefore the transportation sector and its importance have always been emphasized in the economic literature. As a central and vital infrastructure, ports play an important and essential role in the transportation system. With this attitude, in the present research, it has been tried to investigate the effect of the performance of Iranian ports as public infrastructures on the growth of the economic indicators mentioned in the development programs. For this purpose, firstly, the economic indicators mentioned in the development programs were extracted and the importance of each one was discussed. The results showed that no clear definition of the concept of economic development has been provided in any of the development programs. Regarding quantification, only in the 6th development program, macro quantitative goals and economic sectors are presented separately, and it is mentioned in a limited way in other programs. The results showed that the sixth development program has the highest frequency of economic indicators of development (366 times) and the fourth program (235 times), the fifth (226 times), the second (240 times), the first program (221) and the third program (189 times) are respectively in the next stages. Also, among the indicators of economic development, the index of production (240 times), income (169 times), employment (142 times) and inflation (17 times), gross domestic product (18 times), and the active presence of women in society (21 times) respectively have the lowest frequency in development programs.