GENEVA — Streamlining Customs clearance for shipments, boosting core transportation infrastructure, enhancing supply chain reliability and more competitive freight forwarding services could increase trade in emerging nations by 15 percent, a World Bank report said.
“Economic competitiveness is relentlessly driving countries to strengthen performance, and improving trade logistics is a smart way to deliver more efficiencies, lower costs and added economic growth,” said Robert Zoellick, World Bank president.
Zoellick, a former U.S. Trade Representative, said “streamlining the connections” among manufacturers and consumers offers strong growth and investment opportunities, and should be a key focus for emerging nations’ growth strategies.
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The survey concluded there is still “a substantial logistics gap” between rich and emerging nations.
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The World Bank study, “Connecting to Compete 2010: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy,” ranks the performance of 155 nations worldwide. The study, which polled almost 1,000 logistics professionals from international freight forwarding and express carrier companies, estimated the logistics performance index is 45 percent higher for rich nations than for poor nations.
The report said that, even more than time and cost, logistics performance depends “on the reliability and predictability of the supply chain,” and notes that in poor performing countries, importers and exporters incur extra costs because of the need to offset the effects of unreliable supply chains. The extra costs “ultimately fall on end users and consumers,” the study said.
The results of the survey show that some textiles and apparel exporting nations, such as China and Bangladesh, have posted bigger gains compared with the 2007 survey as others have achieved incremental improvements and some have regressed.
In 2010, China was ranked 27th, up from 30th three years earlier, and Bangladesh was 79th, up from 87th, while Vietnam, which reported some improvements, remained in the same 53rd slot.
Germany was ranked the world’s top logistics performer, followed by Singapore and Sweden in second and third place, respectively. The U.S. was 15th, Canada was 14th and Mexico was 50th.