India has climbed 6th places on the World Bank's Logistic Performance Index (LPI) 2023, now ranking 38th out of 139 countries index, as a result of significant investments in both soft and hard infrastructure as well as technology.
According to the report:
India's rank moved up 5th places in infrastructure score from 52nd in 2018 to 47th in 2023.
It climbed to the 22nd spot for international shipments in 2023 from 44th in 2018 and moved four places up to 48th in logistics competence and equality.
In timelines, India witnessed a 17-place jump in rankings, whereas it moved up three places in rank in tracking and tracing to 38th.
The report quotes modernisation and digitalisation as a reason for emerging economies, like India, to leapfrog advanced countries.
Since 2015, the Government of India has invested in trade-related soft and hard infrastructure connecting port gateways on both coasts to the economic poles in the hinterland.
The government had announced the PM Gati Shakti initiative, a National Master Plan for multimodal connectivity, in 2021 to reduce logistics cost and boost the economy by 2024-25.
In 2022, the Prime Minister launched the National Logistics Policy (NLP) to ensure quick last-mile delivery, end transport-related challenges, save time and money of the manufacturing sector and ensure desired speed in the logistics sector.
The average dwell time for containers between May and October 2022 was three days for India and Singapore, much better than in some of the industrialised countries. The dwell time for the U.S. was seven days and for Germany, it was 10 days.
The Logistics Performance Index is an interactive benchmarking tool developed by the World Bank to help countries identify the challenges and opportunities they face in their performance on trade logistics and what they can do to improve their performance. The International LPI 2023 allows for comparisons across 139 countries.
The Logistics Performance Index is based on two components:
A worldwide survey of international logistics operators on the ground (global freight forwarders and express carriers), providing feedback on the logistics “friendliness” of the countries with which they trade.
The second component of the LPI is based on granular high frequency information on maritime shipping and container tracking, postal and air freight activities that was collected and made available to LPI by several data partners.