SA's logistics performance going downhill

Logistics performance in SA is slipping downhill, according to the World Bank. But it still maintains the top spot in Africa according to the organisation’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) report for 160 countries in 2014. It scores six key dimensions between 0-5 (with 5 the top score). And a country’s overall LPI score is the weighted average of its scores on these six.With SA’s 2014 score in brackets, the six dimensions are: * Efficiency of the clearance process (ie, speed, simplicity and predictability of formalities) by border control agencies, including customs (3.11); * Quality of trade and transport related infrastructure eg, ports, railroads, roads, information technology (3.20); * Ease of arranging competitively priced shipments (3.45); * Competence and quality of logistics services eg, transport operators, customs brokers (3.62); * Ability to track and trace consignments (3.30); and * Timeliness of shipments in reaching destination within the scheduled or expected delivery time (3.88). As you can see, SA’s top scores are for “timeliness” and “logistics competence”; our lowest for “customs” and “infrastructure”. Ranking this country at 34th place in 2014, the WB noted that, after a 6.53% decline in overall performance to an LPI score of 3.43, SA had fallen 11 places from 23rd spot in the bank’s 2012 LPI study. Admittedly, we were the top performing African country this year. But, given the quality of the opposition, that’s a limited claim to fame. In sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi in 73rd place, Kenya (74), Nigeria (75), Rwanda (80) and Namibia (93) were the top performers after SA. The worst performing sub-Saharan country was the Democratic Republic of Congo (159) – or second last in the LPI league to worst-performer Somalia. SA also soundly beat the Middle East and North Africa region, where the highest dimensional score was 2.93 for timeliness compared to our 3.88. And its average LPI score was 2.50 compared to our 3.43. There’s little point in matching SA scores to the topnotchers in the LPI. Top scorer Germany, for example, has all of its dimensional scores bar one (“international shipments”) well over 4 – with its average LPI 4.12. But it may be better to rate SA’s rankings against the other semi-developed nations in the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) consortium. In this, SA is only marginally below China. And indeed, we beat them in “logistics competence” and “timeliness”. The comparative LPI scores were 3.53 for China and 3.43 for SA. And dimensionally the Chinese scores were (SA’s in brackets): “customs” 3.21 (3.11); “infrastructure” 3.67 (3.20); “international shipments” 3.50 (3.45); “logistics competence” 3.46 (3.62); tracking & tracing 3.50 (3.30); “timeliness” 3.87 (3.88). India, Brazil and Russia were all below SA – with Brazil and Russia scoring mostly in the 2s. In the WB report, titled ‘Connecting to Compete 2014: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy’, SA is noted to be an “over-performing non-highincome” economy. In this, at 34th LPI spot, we are ranked with Malaysia (25), China (28), Thailand (35), Vietnam (48) and India (54).