A.Zafer ACAR,  Halim YURDAKUL

ABSTRACT

Competitiveness is an irrefutable phenomenon in liberalized, privatized and globalized business environment at the level of both corporates and economies. In such conditions countries tend to perform more international trade to be competitive and to increase country’s economic growth rate. Meanwhile, the global logistics industry as a facilitator in international trade has grown significantly while logistics has become a significant part of the business economic system and major global economic activity in recent years. Thus, today logistics is becoming a vital element of competitiveness and economic performance both in itself and within the context of increasing globalization.

Turkey has a plan to increase its economic position through increasing international trade volume, simultaneously wanting to increase its competitiveness in logistics as well. Since the aim of this paper is to evaluate the competitive power of logistics industry in Turkey, Logistics Performance Index (LPI) is analyzed without neglecting its facilitator role in business life and relationship with economic competitiveness. So, while analyzing LPI a qualitative comparison is done both with Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and Doing Business Index (DBI).

Keywords: Logistics, Competitiveness, Turkey; Indexes