Alina Mustra's blog

In today’s interconnected world economy, efficient, reliable and cost-effective supply chains have become necessities in global trade. Trading in a timely manner with minimal transaction costs allows a country to expand to overseas markets and improve its overall economic competitiveness. For many countries, however, identifying bottlenecks along a supply chain and then determining which logistics procedures and infrastructure to upgrade can be a challenging feat.

These concerns were at the forefront of a World Bank workshop held in Seoul, Korea this week that examined trade and transport facilitation assessments and explained some of the practical implemental guidelines. The World Bank workshop was part of the Asia Pacific Facilitation Forum (APTFF) annual conference, which attracted more than 200 policymakers and private sector representatives from 25 countries across Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

The workshop focused on two World Bank trade facilitation tools: the Logistics Performance Index (LPI), a global benchmarking indicator, and the Trade and Transport Facilitation Assessment (TTFA), a country-level diagnostic tool for logistics performance.