COTE D’Ivoire, Senegal and Sao Tome have beaten Nigeria to the fourth position in the World Bank new global trade Logistics Performance Index (LPI) for the year 2016.

The World Bank ranking revealed that Cote d’Ivoire led the West African region with an average point of 2.6, closely followed by Senegal and Sao Tome with 2.59 average point respectively in logistics competence in West Africa.

LPI is the weighted average of the country scores on the six key dimensions which include, efficiency of the clearance process, quality of trade and transport related infrastructure, ease of arranging competitively priced shipments, competence and quality of logistics services, ability to track and trace consignments, and timeliness of shipments in reaching destination within the scheduled or expected delivery time.

Efficiency of the clearance process

The scorecard allows comparisons with the world (with the option to display world’s best performer) and with the region or income group on the six indicators and the overall LPI index. On the number of export and import agencies, while Nigeria has eight and seven respectively, Senegal has three each for export and import as against two agencies each for Cote d’Ivoire.

For declaration submitted and processed electronically, Cote d’Ivoire recorded a 100 percent, just like the Senegalese counterpart, but Nigeria recorded a mere 63.64 percent. For the time spent on physical examination of cargoes, it takes two days to carry out the cargo examination process in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, while it takes four days in Nigeria.

For cargo examination without physical process, it takes three days in Nigeria, two days in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal respectively.

Reacting to the development, Mr. Alban Igwe, Deputy National President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) said that Nigeria has refused to see the potentials in the logistics industry and, therefore, lacks the vision and strategy to grow the industry. He said that Logistics industry contributes 12 percent to global businesses adding that the benefit of a well structured logistics industry will continue to elude Nigeria if it does not take action to redress the current situation.

Similarly, Dr. Zeb Ikokide, a seasoned logistics expert and vice chairman of the Port Facility Security Officers (PFSO) told Vanguard that logistics industry lacks funding and urged the government to take a critical look at the logistic industry with a view to harnessing its potentials.

Vanguardngr