India ranks 46, Japan 8 in logistics performance

Countries like India, China and the US, which pursued aggressive reforms, have improved their global trade logistics performance despite the slowdown in progress in the sector over the last two years amid the global recession, the World Bank has said.

India now ranks 46th in global trade logistics performance, whose top five slot are occupied by Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Germany and Netherlands in the list of 155 countries.

The United States is ranked ninth, while Japan occupies the eight spot.

Countries like Chile, China, India, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey and the US all improved their previous performance, the World Bank said, citing a study based on a comprehensive global survey of international freight forwarders and express carriers, as it released the "Connecting to Compete 2012: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy" report.

"Trade logistics is key to economic competitiveness, growth and poverty reduction," Otaviano Canuto, World Bank Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM), said.
"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," he said.

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, the Bank said.

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, the Bank reported.