The UK is now ranked fourth among the top logistics performers in the world.

It jumped from 10th in the World Bank’s latest list of top logistics performers as measured by the Logistics Performance Index.

The index, which scrutinises 160 countries, gives an overall score that reflects perceptions of a nation’s logistics.

Customs performance, infrastructure quality, timeliness of shipments, and a host of other trade dimensions are all measured.

Germany took top spot in the latest index, up from fourth in the last report two years ago, followed by Netherlands and Belgium.

Elsewhere, the United States maintained its position of ninth, while China was 28th, India was 54th, Brazil was 65th and Russia was 90th.

The World Bank Group’s International Trade Unit has produced the Logistics Performance Index about every two years since 2007.

A score is given for each country as a percentage of the highest performer. The UK, for example, produced a score that was 96.6% of top-placed Germany.

The US score was 93.5% of the highest performer, while France was 91.2%, Italy 86.2%, China 81.1% and Russia 54%.

“The index is trying to capture a rather complex reality: attributes of the supply chain,” said Jean-François Arvis, senior transport economist and the founder of the Logistics Performance Index project.

“In countries with high logistics costs, it is often not the distance between trading partners, but reliability of the supply chain that is the most important contributor to those costs.”

The 2014 report - Connecting to Compete 2014: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy - found that high-income countries dominate the world’s top 10 performers.

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