Colombo trails in global trade logistics
Sri Lanka is nowhere near the top 10 high-calibre performers in world trade logistics services, although a parade of national leaders is continuing to peddle the myth of a global or even regional logistics hub, cargo hub, shipping hub and the like.
Trade logistics involves a chain of services to support goods movement, trade across geographical borders, and domestic commerce.
The world’s dominant logistics player is Singapore, which leads with a score of 4.3 (out of 5), a World Bank survey of 139 countries from September-November 2022 shows.
Among the top 12 players, 8 are in Europe — Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden. Then there are Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada.
Sri Lanka scores just 2.8 in logistics performance; 2.5 for customs; 2.4 for infrastructure; 2.8 for international shipments; 2.7 for logistics shipments; 3.3 for timeliness; and 3 for tracking and tracing. Sri Lanka fares worse than Rwanda, Botswana, Peru, Namibia, Solomon Islands, and Benin in some aspects.
The average score of the top 10 is 4.1 on a 5-point scale. The bottom 10 averaged 1.8 overall.
The survey incorporates new key performance indicators — based on millions of global movements of containers, aviation shipments, and postal parcels — generated from a 'Big Data' approach, measuring the speed of global trade.
The survey analysed six aspects — customs and border management clearance efficiency; quality of trade-and-transportrelated infrastructure; ease of arranging competitively priced international shipments; competence and quality of logistics services; ability to track and trace consignments; and frequency with which shipments reach consignees within the scheduled or expected delivery time. Strong overall performance is linked with good outcomes from all these aspects.
As for container port performance, in a separate survey of ports in West Asia, central, and South Asia, the King Abdallah Port ranks first in 2021. The Port of Colombo ranks 24, below Dammam and Djibouti, and ahead of Jawaharlal Nehru Port (54) and Chennai (79), and Karachi (90). Rankings are based on statistical and administrative approaches.
As a large port moving more than 4 million boxes a year, Colombo ranks 24. In terms of ship size (less than 1,500 containers) the port ranks 24, with 185 feeder ships. While Singapore ranks 31, it records 6,301 port calls versus Colombo’s 1,598 in 2021.
At the Port of Colombo, import and export delays are part of the problem. Corrupt politicians, officials and tycoons interfere to clear or rig duties of shipments such as in the milk powder import scam, sugar fraud, and rice scam, as well as 240-plus containers of putrid hospital and municipal waste found in 2019 in a ‘free trade zone’ in Katunayake and ‘CICT terminal’. Such practices are unheard of in Singapore or Hong Kong ports.