India jumps 6 places in World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index 2023

India has jumped 6 places and ranked 38 out of 139 countries in the 7th edition of World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index 2023, Ministry of Commerce & Industry said on 26 April.

India has seen remarkable improvement on 4 out of 6 LPI indicators, added the ministry. 

“This is a strong indicator of India’s global positioning, with this development being powered by our Government’s laser focus on reforms for improving logistics infrastructure," the government said in an official statement. 

Citing the reasons for the new update, the government gave the credit to its PM GatiShakti National Master Plan launched in October 2021. It added that PM GatiShakti addresses the emerging needs of transforming the logistics landscape due to factors like rapid urbanization, changing energy choices, e-commerce, need to develop resilient supply chains etc.

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Apart from this, the Ministry said that the National Logistics Policy (NLP) -- which acts as a guiding document for States or UTs seeking to formulate logistics policy -- helped improve India's ranking.

The NLP lays emphasis on the shift towards more energy-efficient modes of transportation and greener fuels to reduce the carbon footprint.

The Commerce Ministry in its statement even included that the government also invested in trade-related soft and hard infrastructure connecting port gateways on both coasts to the economic zones in hinterland.

Adding more, the Ministry said that NICDC’s Logistics Data Bank project -- applying radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to containers -- and its implementation since 2016 on the Western part of India and scaling up to Pan India level in 2020 has been significant improvement in cross-border trade facilitation.

Also, the Logistics Data Bank project promotes healthy competition amongst the ports as it provides information on performance benchmarking, congestion, dwell time, speed, and transit time analysis, the Ministry said.

The Commerce Ministry even noted that initiatives like Sagarmala and Bharatmala have played a pivotal role in improving India’s logistics efficiency.