Agility, a global logistics company with extensive expertise in emerging markets, in collaboration with the logistics research firm Transport Intelligence, released its “Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index 2024” report in which it offers a quick insight, ranking, and evaluation of 50 emerging markets. The index is calculated based on 4 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.

-       Digital Readiness: measures the potential and progress of an emerging market in becoming a digitally-led, skills rich, innovation oriented and sustainable economy in the future.

China topped the list of countries covered in the Logistics Index for yet another consecutive year with a score of 8.61, followed by India (score: 7.21), the United Arab Emirates (score: 6.49), Malaysia (score: 6.17), and Indonesia (score: 6.16), only to name a few. However, the report indicated that the gap between China and India is starting to diminish as renewable electricity in India is growing at a faster pace than in any other major economy in addition to the fact that the country is one of the world’s largest producers of modern bioenergy and is planning to scale up its use.

Regionally, the Middle East and North Africa region’s performance in the index remained robust as 3 countries ranked among the top ten emerging economies in terms of logistics led by the United Arab Emirates which was followed by Saudi Arabia (6^th global rank with a score of 6.05) and Qatar (8^th global rank with a score of 5.85). The report noted in this respect that Saudi Arabia has seen the most progress in diversifying its economy over the past decade (267% growth), followed by the UAE and Qatar.

On the local front, Lebanon came in 43^rd among the 50 covered nations in the 2024 Emerging Markets Logistics Index with a score of 4.50, in comparison with a score of 4.58 in 2023. In fact, Lebanon’s worst performance was in the Business Fundamentals sub-index (score: 4.01; rank: 39), yet fared better in International Logistics (score: 4.44; rank: 33), Domestic Logistics (score: 4.66; rank: 35) and Digital Readiness (score: 4.72; rank: 33) sub-indices.