KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has jumped 15 ranks in the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2023 to 26 ranks, the second-best performing ASEAN country after Singapore.
This was a significant improvement from rankings of 41 in 2018 and 32 in 2016, according to Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC) director-general Datuk Abdul Latif Haji Abu Seman.
"The best ranking Malaysia has attained was 25 in the World Bank LPI 2014 report," he said when commenting on the long-awaited 2023 LPI report, the last edition of which was published in 2018.
The seventh edition of Connecting to Compete, the LPI report comes after three years of supply chain disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic and covers the latest view on the trade logistics performance of 139 countries.
Abdul Latif said the LPI report is a benchmarking tool to help countries identify where improvements in international trade logistics can be made to increase competitiveness.
Meanwhile, Logistics Productivity Nexus (LPN) champion Datuk Seri Michael Tio said if Malaysia continues to benchmark Singapore, it will be able to position Malaysia in the top 10 of the LPI ranking soon.
He added that the 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.
"This latest LPI 2023 edition introduces a new set of key performance indicators (KPIs), derived from a Big Data approach, measuring the speed of trade globally.
"The indicators are based on technological advances in tracking actual high-frequency international movements of maritime shipping, containers, air freight, and postal parcels by trade lane and gateway," he noted.
Tio said the logistics industry has much room for improvement to be the preferred logistics destination in Asean, and Malaysia has a comprehensive infrastructure for the logistics industry to thrive while having good connectivity via land, sea, and air.
He also said institutional and regulatory mismatch, 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 added.
In the Twelfth Malaysia Plan, MPC has the mandate to establish the LPN to increase the industry's productivity and competitiveness at the sectoral and enterprise levels.
Logistics Sustainability Performance Framework (LSPF) is among the initial flagship projects towards this end.