'Make In India' Also Requires Move In India Push

An interesting measure, which is the percentage of the highest performer, is also mentioned. India, which has a score of 3.42, is thus performing at a level of roughly three fourth's of Germany's. Within the BRICS economies, India is placed below South Africa (20) and China (27), while it is placed above Brazil (55) and Russia (99).

Second, India's performance has seen a rise along key dimensions like customs (up 27 ranks from 2014) and tracking and tracing (up 24 ranks from 2014). It has shown modest improvements in international shipping (up five ranks from 2014) and timeliness (up nine ranks from 2014). However, it is worth noting that India has moved up since 2014 in all key six indicators used to compute international LPI. This shows that despite the trade shrinkage due to prevailing international conditions, Indian logistics providers are seeing improvements in customs procedures, tracking of shipments and improvements in infrastructure within the sector.

Third, the domestic LPI offers rich insights on how a country is perceived by its logistics providers. This has two key dimensions namely -- environment and institutions and performance. In the first aspect, an astounding 63 per cent of respondents feel port charges are high in India. Similarly, on the quality of infrastructure, a massive 60 per cent feel roads are low quality/very low quality in India. For sources of delays, maritime transshipment is seen by 36 per cent of the respondents as a major cause of delays.

On the performance aspect, India needs to improve its performance on the percentage of shipments meeting quality criteria, which is at 68.7 per cent. These responses clearly lay out areas where governments at the central and state levels have to improve over the long term.

In the years ahead, India should aim to improve performance along key dimensions on the international as well as domestic LPI, where it is relatively a laggard. These include focusing on the timeliness of shipments and on removing infrastructural bottlenecks and improving the quality of infrastructure. It has done well on this year's Index owing to the commitment to improve connectivity with the world. Hopefully in the years ahead, along with focusing on Make in India there is also a commitment to Move in India.

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