NEW DELHI: Amid improvement in movement of goods and services, facilitating better trade, India has jumped 19 places in the latest World Bank ranking in the global logistics performance index.
The World Bank, in its latest once-in-two-year Logistics Performance Index (LPI), said India is now ranked 35th as against the 54th spot it occupied in the previous 2014 report.
While Germany tops the 2016 rankings, India is ahead of comparatively advanced economies like Portugal and New Zealand. “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,” the report said.
Jim Yong Kim, president of World Bank who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on last Thursday, congratulated him on this achievement and expressed the Bank’s commitment to support India for its endeavours and various projects.
Better performance in logistics will not only boost programmes, such as Make in India, by enabling India to become part of the global supply chain, it can also help increase trade, the report noted.
The LPI does not address how easy or difficult it is to move goods to the hinterland. For that, the World Bank has another measure—a domestic LPI that analyzes a country’s performance over four factors: infrastructure, services, border procedures and supply chain reliability.
“India improved the most on the efficiency of customs and border management clearance, jumping from 65 in 2014 to 38 in 2016,” the report said.