News
The gap between the countries that perform best and worst in trade logistics is still quite large, despite a slow convergence since 2007, according to a new World Bank Group report. This gap persists because of the complexity of logistics-related reforms and investment in developing countries, and despite the almost universal recognition that poor supply-chain efficiency is the main barrier to trade integration in the modern world.
The report, ''Connecting to Compete 2014: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy,'' ranks 160 countries on a number of dimensions of trade -- including customs performance, infrastructure quality, and timeliness of shipments -- that have increasingly been recognized as important to development. The World Bank Group's International Trade Unit has produced the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) about every two years since 2007.
In the 2014 LPI report, Germany showed the world's best overall logistics performance. Somalia had the lowest score. As with previous editions, the 2014 report finds that high-income countries dominate the world's top-ten performers. Japan has been ranked number 10 stepping back from its 2012 ranking of 8.
Among low-income countries, Malawi, Kenya, and Rwanda showed the highest performance. In general, the trend across past reports has been that countries are improving and low-performing countries are improving their overall scores faster than high-performing countries, the report said.
