In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is behind Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand but ahead of the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia. Compared to last year’s rankings, this year, Vietnam improved 1 place to 10th place.

Agility’s ranking index is based on four criteria including: domestic logistics opportunities, international logistics opportunities, technology readiness index, and business principles.

Specifically, in terms of domestic logistics opportunities, Vietnam is ranked at 16th position, an improvement of 1 place compared to 2022 with 5.02 points. Based on business conditions and technology readiness index, Vietnam is ranked 19th and 15th respectively.

In terms of international logistics opportunities, Vietnam is currently leading Southeast Asia, ranked 4th in the rankings with 6.03 points. According to the report, Vietnam is a beneficiary country when global manufacturing and retail businesses are looking for ways to diversify supply and reduce dependence on the Chinese market.

For example, in 2020, Apple begins to plan to expand its assembly operations in Vietnam. Sony, Samsung and LG have also expanded production in Vietnam, building transport infrastructure to support business operations.

However, in order to escape the middle-income “trap”, reduce the risk of facing the challenges of low labor productivity, environmental pollution… and move further on the rankings, the report pointed out, Vietnam needs to provide investors with a complete production eco-system package including: diverse suppliers, good information technology links, high-quality labor and optimal logistics. This is important in improving logistics costs in Vietnam as logistics costs currently stand at 20% of GDP, higher than the Asian average, according to Aligity estimates.