Germany Moves to Number 1, Slightly Ahead of Singapore; US Comes in at Number 15, as Euro Countries Dominate
For the second time, the World Bank has ranked more than 150 countries based on their logistics infrastructure and performance. The resulting Logistics Performance Index (LPI) for 2010, released by the World Bank last week, places Germany as number 1 in a top 10 dominated by Northern European countries; the US came in at number 15.
The first World Bank LPI report was released in late 2007 (See Supply Chain Graphic of the Week – Which Countries are the Most Logistics Friendly? and World Bank Report Ranks 150 Countries on Logistics Performance) and was noteworthy both for its attempt to rank total logistics performance by country, and its strong recognition of the role of logistics in a country’s overall economic performance.
"Connecting to Compete 2007 helped spark dialogue in several countries among various stakeholders in the government and between policymakers and the private sector about measures to address logistics bottlenecks and facilitate international trade and transportation," the report notes. "The optimistic messages from Connecting to Compete 2010 should encourage countries to do even more, particularly important for countries whose trade logistics performance continues to be low."
The country performance index is based on survey responses from a large number international freight forwarders and third party logistics companies. All told, more than 5000 individual country assessments were collected.
The survey respondents are asked to evaluate a county on a series of international related logistics issues, as well as capabilities internal to a given country. The focus is primarily around issues related to logistics time and cost.
In the end, the LPI is a composite of a country’s rating across six different attributes:
- Efficiency of the customs clearance process.
- Quality of trade and transport-related infrastructure.
- Ease of arranging competitively priced shipments.
- Competence and quality of logistics services.
- Ability to track and trace consignments.
- Frequency with which shipments reach the consignee within the scheduled or expected time.
Survey respondents were asked to rank each of some 155 countries across each of those attributes through a series of questions that then get translated into a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best score. The World Bank intends to repeat the study every two years.
Germany Moves to Top Ranking
For 2010, based on survey data collected in 2009, Germany moved to the top spot, with a total index score of 4.11, just nudging out Singapore, the top ranked country in 2007, which had a score of 4.09 in this year's survey.
The top 10 plus the United State are illustrated in the table below, along with each top 10 country's 2007 rating.
| 2010 Ranking | Country | 2007 Ranking |
| 1 | Germany | 3 |
| 2 | Singapore | 1 |
| 3 | Sweden | 4 |
| 4 | Netherlands | 2 |
| 5 | Luxemburg | 23 |
| 6 | Switzerland | 7 |
| 7 | Japan | 6 |
| 8 | United Kingdom | 9 |
| 9 | Belgium | 12 |
| 10 | Norway | 16 |
| 15 | USA | 14 |
