June 8 - The latest survey on the efficient global movement of goods by the World Bank suggests that high income economies are better at logistics efficiency.

The efficiency of logistics often seems to be affected by the quality of public sector institutions, particularly Customs. In some of the countries which are lower in the league table, containers are physically inspected with much more frequency.

Areas for improvement include: transport policies, freight forwarding, railways and supporting infrastructure.

According to the World Bank's latest survey on trade logistics, progress in trade logistics performance slowed down over the last two years amid the global recession, but countries that pursued aggressive reforms continued to improve their performance.

Singapore is the top performer among the 155 economies included in the Logistics Performance Indicators, which are part of the "Connecting to Compete 2012: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy" report.

Countries like Chile, China, India, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and the USA all improved their previous performance, according to the study, which is based on a comprehensive world survey of international freight forwarders and express carriers.

"Trade logistics is key to economic competitiveness, growth, and poverty reduction," said Otaviano Canuto, World Bank vice president for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management.

"Unfortunately, the logistics gap between rich and poor countries continues and the convergence trend experienced between 2007 and 2010 has stalled as events like the global recession and the European debt crisis shifted attention away from logistics reform."

According to the LPI, high income economies dominate the top logistics rankings, while the economies with the worst performance are least developed countries that are also often landlocked, small islands, or post-conflict states. Nevertheless, logistics performance is not simply determined by the level of per capita income, as many countries across different income groups have done better than their peers.

The full report can be seen on the World Bank's website: http://www.worldbank.org/ or:http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23196035~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

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