India will urge the World Bank to reconsider how this multilateral agency tabulates the widely popular Logistic Performance Index (LPI). Speaking to journalists in New Delhi, Special Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Sumita Dawra said the present LPI calculation does not take into account recent interventions made by the Indian government to improve logistics in the country. An official statement said India wants an objective based methodology for LPI scoring.
This index helps countries identify the challenges and opportunities countries face in their performance on trade logistics. Rankings are based on a perception-based survey conducted across select stakeholders dealing with respective countries.
Dawra said India aims to improve its ranking on the index to within the top 25 globally by 2030. The country ranked 39 in the 2023 edition of LPI, which compared 139 countries. India’s ranking on this index has improved from 44 on the index during 2018. Singapore, Finland and Denmark are the top three ranking countries on this index. Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya are the last three on LPI.
Commenting on how the World Bank LPI ranking presently works, Dawra said, “We feel this is a very narrow way of ranking India on an important global indices. There is a lot of work going on and that should also be reflected in how this calculation is done.” She was responding to a query from ET on why there is a demand from India to change the ranking methodology considering how the country’s rank has improved in recent times.
Dawra said that interventions such as the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), Logistics Data Bank (LDB), and PM Gati Shakti are not being accurately reflected in the LPI since there are no parallels to them in the world.
“We would want our ranking to improve and this would happen only if there is a realistic and factual reflection of the kind of reform which has happened here and the kind of work evidenced through various case studies,” she said.
According to Dawra, the change in rankings will have to be standard for all the countries. “When we look at Gati Shatki, it is something that only India has done…We have made giant strides in improving the infrastructure for logistics this should be included in the calculation of the ranking.”
Issues with World Bank’s logistic performance index
-rankings are survey based
-PM Gati Shakti gains not reflected
-India specific interventions being ignored
What India wants
-objective based methodology for LPI scoring
-realistic and factual representation of reforms
