Sri Lanka ranked 81st in LPI 2012

The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) is a benchmark produced by the World Bank biennially since 2007. The index focuses on measuring participant nations based on trade & logistics performance. In this year’s edition, aptly named “Connecting to Compete: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy,” 155 nations are ranked. We at CILT Sri Lanka translate the latest index as Sri Lanka have made a mammoth leap from 137 to 81 over the past couple of years.

The World Bank brings efficiency of logistics down to three factors, government services, investments and policies. Although there has been unprecedented growth in logistics over the past couple of decades, the World Bank highlights the presence of a “logistics gap” between the developing and developed nations.

This is cited as a key obstacle in globalisation and international trade and it’s suggested that the respective governments pay more attention to improving logistics performance as good logistics often translates into economic growth and decline of poverty. The need of policymakers and the private sector working in unison is highlighted throughout the report as essential for sustainable logistics growth.

For the first time, the LPI has taken into consideration the environmental impacts of logistics in this year’s report. The LPI is built around the survey of logistics professionals who rate countries based on key factors such as customs clearance efficiency, infrastructure, traceability and etcetera.The survey is created by the World Bank with the help of academics and logistics service providers with the aim of making it an unbiased simple benchmark to compare countries and to get a rough understanding of the elements at play. It will be a good indicator for a country like Sri Lanka to delve into and plan our future logistics growth upon.

In this year’s rankings Singapore take the pole position with Hong Kong, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands completing the top five. Denmark slots in at a close sixth. Only those countries have garnered a Score above the threshold of 4 The lowest ranked country is Africa’s Burundi with a score of 1.61. Japan, United States and United Kingdom were ranked 8, 9 & 10 respectively with the world’s 2nd largest economy (China) coming in at 26th.

In the SAARC region India takes pole position as they are ranked 46th with a solid score of 3.08. Pakistan is ranked 71 with 2.83. Sri Lanka chips in 3rd out of the 8 SAARC nations at 81 with a score of 2.75. This puts Sri Lanka at the middle of the scale as a third quintile performer. Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan were ranked 104, 107 & 135 respectively. Nepal is dwelling in the cellar as they are ranked a meagre 151th out of 155 participants, with a score of 2.04. Bangladesh was dropped from the index due to the insufficient data available.