The paper proceeds as follows. The next section provides an overall description of
the sector. Section 3 provides a review of key data on the logistics sector, focussing on
overall performance and the core processes that affect it. Section 4 discusses challenges
facing countries eager to further develop the logistics sector. Section 5 discusses recent
attempts in the Asia-Pacific and beyond to deal with some of those issues. Section 6
summarizes the paper and concludes.
2. Description of the sector
The common use of the term “logistics” limits it largely to a particular set of third-party
operations, especially freight forwarders and express operators. In contrast, at its
broadest, the logistics sector includes transport, freight forwarding and express
operations, warehousing, and retail and wholesale distribution. From a policy
standpoint, the broader view – a “whole of supply chain” approach – is important
because it is necessary to take a holistic perspective to dealing with trade logistics.
That perspective is necessarily multi-faceted. It facilitates a policy stance that
reduces bottlenecks and chokepoints at all points in the chain, and thus facilitates trade
transactions to the maximum possible extent. In a nutshell, it is the set of operations
that bring producers in one country into contact with consumers in another; it is
the “grease in the wheels” of international commerce that makes trade relations
possible. Trade logistics therefore incorporates two main components: international
and domestic logistics. The former set of activities focusses on the way in which
goods move between countries, and the latter focusses on their movement within
countries.