Agility, a global logistics company with extensive expertise in emerging markets, in collaboration with the logistics research firm Transport Intelligence, released this week its “Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index 2019” report in which it offers a quick insight, ranking, and evaluation of 50 emerging markets. The index changed its methodology in 2019 and is now calculated based on 3 equally weighted metrics highlighted in the following section:

-       Domestic Logistics: assesses the size and growth of domestic logistics markets, the economy and of the population, income equality, urbanization and development of business clusters.

-       International Logistics: assesses the size and growth of international logistics markets and of logistics intensive trade, infrastructure quality and connectedness.

-       Business Fundamentals: assesses the regulatory environment, credit and debt dynamics, contract enforcement and anti-corruption frameworks, inflation and price stability, cost of crime & violence and market accessibility and domestic stability.

In detail, and according to the report, the prospects of the global economy seem to be a bit ambiguous bearing in mind a potential trade war between the U.S.A. and China and a possible disorderly Brexit. The report pointed out that the outsourcing of logistics services is expected to accelerate as e-commerce giants in emerging markets are rapidly expanding their sales domestically and abroad. Surveyed experts as per the report expected India, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Indonesia to have the best logistics potential whereas Syria, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and Ethiopia were deemed to have the least potential.

China topped the list of countries covered in the Logistics Index for yet another consecutive year with a score of 8.87, followed by India (score: 7.39), the United Arab Emirates (score: 6.16), Indonesia (score: 6.09), and Malaysia (score: 6.00), only to name a few.

Regionally, the Middle East and North Africa region’s performance in the index remained robust as 4 countries ranked among the top ten emerging economies. In details, the United Arab Emirates topped the regional rankings, followed by Saudi Arabia (6^th rank internationally with a score of 5.71), Qatar (8^th rank internationally with a score of 5.62), Turkey (9^th rank internationally with a score of 5.56) and Oman (12^th rank internationally with a score of 5.44).

On the local front, Lebanon came in 29^th among the 50 covered nations with an index score of 4.71. In fact, Lebanon’s worst performance was in the Business Fundamentals sub-index (score: 4.30; rank: 35), yet fared better in the International Logistics (score: 4.69; rank: 27) and Domestic Logistics (score: 4.93; rank: 21) sub-indices.