India now ranks 35 in the World Bank’s logistics performance index, in which Germany is right at the top and Luxembourg a close second. Sweden occupies the third spot.

The report, which released on Tuesday, states that among the top 30 performing countries, 22 are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and this has almost remained unchanged since the 2014 report.
“Nonetheless, countries can still outperform their income group peers despite the performance gap. This is why income alone cannot explain why performance varies widely among countries in certain income groups. The list of countries over-performing their income group peers includes Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, but also China and India,” it said.

The report – Connecting to Compete: 2016 Trade Logistics in the Global Economy – said that once more, high-income economies solidified their past performance by occupying the top 10 positions of the ranking in 2016.
“In fact, the composition of the top 15 on the list of best performing countries has only changed marginally since 2014 and even 2010. This is not surprising. These countries have been traditionally recognized as dominant players in the supply chain industry, with a global footprint in transportation and logistics services provision.”

The report went on to say that the lower-middle-income group “continues to be led by large economies such as India and Indonesia and emerging economies such as Kenya and Vietnam”.

Logistics performance captures more than income, as observed since the first LPI report in 2007. International supply chains are organized across groups of regional trading countries. Provisions for services and trade facilitation initiatives are designed and implemented regionally. Reflecting on these mechanisms, the LPI data show that performance is quite consistent within integrated sub-regions, it said.

“In South Asia, lack of integration means that the good logistics performance of India does not improve that of its neighbors. Meanwhile, East Asian economies have performed consistently well across LPI editions.”

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