Singapore is the top logistics performer, according to the World Bank’s latest survey on global trade logistics released on Tuesday. Hong Kong, Finland and Denmark are on the top-ten list.
Based on a comprehensive world survey of international freight forwarders and express carriers, progress in trade logistics performance slowed down over the last two years amid the global recession, but countries that pursued aggressive reforms continued to improve their performance.
Singapore is the top performer among the 155 economies included in the Logistics Performance Indicators (LPI), which are part of the Connecting to Compete 2012: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy report. Logistics performances of countries like Chile, China, India, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and the U.S. have continued to improve.
The top 10 countries with highest logistics performances are Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, according to the report.
“Trade logistics is key to economic competitiveness, growth, and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, the logistics gap between rich and poor countries continues and the convergence trend experienced between 2007 and 2010 has stalled as events like the global recession, and the European debt crisis shifted attention away from logistics reform,” said Otaviano Canuto, World Bank Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM).
According to the LPI, high income economies dominate the top logistics rankings, while the economies with the worst performance are least developed countries that are also often landlocked, small islands, or post-conflict states. Nevertheless, logistics performance is not simply determined by the level of per capita income, as many countries across different income groups have done better than their peers.
In the upper-middle income country category, top performers include South Africa, China and Turkey. In the lower middle income category, India, Morocco and the Philippines have above average performance improvements. And among low-income countries, outperformers included Benin, Malawi and Madagascar.
“Infrastructure stands out as the chief driver of progress in top performers, followed by improvements in logistics services, and customs and border management,” said Mona Haddad, Sector Manager of the World Bank’s International Trade Department. “All top performers show strong cooperation between the public and private sectors, and a comprehensive approach in the development of services, infrastructure and efficient logistics.”
The survey shows while logistics services have improved compared to past surveys, rail services dissatisfied more than 90 percent of respondents.
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