WarehousingIreland.ie – Ireland Moves Up to 11th in World in Top Logistics Performers

Ireland Moves Up to 11th in World in Top Logistics Performers

Apr 13, 2014 Warehousing Ireland News Comments Off on Ireland Moves Up to 11th in World in Top Logistics Performers

Source: DSV E-Zine

Ireland has risen from 25th to 11th in the World Bank’s List of top logistics performers as measured by the Logistics Performance Index.

The index ranks 160 countries on a number of criteria – including customs, performance, infrastructure quality and timeliness of shipments.

Top was Germany, up from 4th in the last report 2 years ago. It is followed by Netherlands, Belgium, Uk and Singapore, which was top 2 years ago. Rounding off the top 10 was Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, US and Japan – with Ireland just outside the top 10 at 11th place.

The LPI gives scores for each country as a percentage of the highest performer. The UK, for example, produced a score that 96.6 per cent of top placed Germany. Ireland came in with a score of 91.4 per cent.

The World Bank Group’s International Trade Unit has produced the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) about every 2 years since 2007. “The LPI is trying to capture a rather complex reality: attributes of the supply chain” said Jean-Francios Arvis, senior transport economist and founder of the LPI project. “In countries with high logistics costs, it is often not the distance between trading partners, but reliability of the supply chain that is the most important contributor to those costs.”

The 2014 report found that high-income countries dominate the world’s top 20 performers, with France, Italy, Denmark and Spain all appearing in the top 20.

In recent years, as tariffs have dropped globally, logistics and other aspects of the trade have gained profile as an arena for reducing trade costs. A 2013 study by the World Bank Group and World Economic Forum found that reducing the high transactions cost and unnecessary red tape faced by traders could provide a significant boost to global GDP.

Either way the Irish Logistics Sector has seen an improvement over the last 2 years and the outlook is bright and predicted for it to continue into the future.