Logistics performance index

India has improved its ranking in the World Bank Group’s bi-annual “Logistics Performance Index 2016“, jumping from 54th in 2014 to 35th in 2016. This was announced by the World Bank Group in its recent launch of the report.

• In the latest ranking India has gone past countries like New Zealand, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Latvia and Indonesia who were ahead of it in the index.

India has improved significantly in the following sub-indices:

• The efficiency of customs and border management clearance, improving from 65 to 38.
• The ability to track and trace consignments, improving from 57 to 33.
• The quality of trade and transport infrastructure, improving from 58 to 36.
• The competence and quality of logistics services, improving from 52 to 32.
• On the remaining two sub-indices – the ease of arranging competitively priced shipments and the frequency with which shipments reach consignees within scheduled or expected delivery times – by 5 and 9 places respectively.

Background:

The World Bank Group’s bi-annual report ‘Connecting to Compete 2016: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy’, launched recently, captures critical information about the complexity of international trade. The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) within the report scores 160 countries on key criteria of logistics performance.

• The scores are based on two sources of information: a worldwide survey of logistics professionals operating on the ground (such as global freight forwarders and express carriers), who provide feedback on the countries in which they operate and with whom they trade; and quantitative data on the performance of key components of the supply chain, such as the time, cost and required procedures to import and export goods.
• The World Bank studies the policy regulation as well as supply chain performance outcomes across six sub-indices of the Logistics Performance Index and ranks countries based on their performance in all the indices.