Malaysia climbed 15 notches to the 26th place in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2023, and took the second spot behind Singapore among its ASEAN peers.
In a statement on Wednesday (April 26), Malaysia Productivity Corp (MPC) Director General, Datuk Abdul Latif Abu Seman, said Malaysia ranked 41st in 2018.
“The best ranking Malaysia has attained was 25th in the World Bank’s LPI 2014 report,” Abdul Latif said. In 2016’s edition, Malaysia ranked 32nd.
Logistics Productivity Nexus (LPN) President, Datuk Seri Michael Tio, said that if Malaysia continues to benchmark Singapore, the nation will be able to position itself in the top 10 of the LPI rankings.
Tio said that Malaysia had comprehensive infrastructure for the logistics industry to thrive, while having good connectivity via land, sea and air, but added that it had much room for improvement to be the preferred logistics destination in ASEAN.
“Institutional and regulatory mismatches, bottlenecks at borders, low – value chain activities, and insufficient and unskilled manpower still need to be addressed. LPN, driven by the industry with government support, will continuously address these issues in a structured manner,” he said.
As for the LPI 2023 rankings of other peers in ASEAN, Thailand ranked 34th, followed jointly by the Philippines and Vietnam (43rd), Indonesia (61st), and both Laos and Cambodia (115th).
According to Abdul Latif, the latest edition of the report covered the latest trade logistics performance of 139 countries, and served as a benchmarking tool to help countries identify where improvements in international trade logistics can be made to increase competitiveness.
LPI measures the ease of establishing reliable and timely supply chain connections and the structural factors that make it possible, such as the quality of logistics services, trade and transport – related infrastructure, and border controls.
“The latest LPI 2023 edition introduced a new set of key performance indicators, derived from a Big Data approach, measuring the speed of trade globally,” Tio said, adding that indicators are based on technological advances in tracking actual high – frequency international movements of maritime shipping, containers, airfreight, and postal parcels by trade lane and gateway.
According to the MPC, the corporation has the mandate to establish LPN to increase the industry’s productivity and competitiveness at the sectoral and enterprise levels under the 12th Malaysia Plan.
“The Logistics Sustainability Performance Framework is among the initial flagship projects towards this end,” it added.
- The Edge Markets
