Abstract:

Increasing global trade with the rapid progress of science and technology has also increased the importance of logistics. In the intense competition environment experienced in the international arena, logistics has become an important element for businesses to achieve competitive advantage. Logistics companies need to be able to respond to customer needs with low cost, speed and high service quality in the process from the starting point of the raw materials and/or products subject to transportation to the delivery point. At the point of evaluation of these developments, the World Bank publishes an index every two years in which the logistics performances of countries are ranked by scoring them over six sub-criteria. According to the Logistics Performance index (LPI), countries can analyze themselves at the point where they are in terms of logistics activities and make improvement studies by seeing their deficiencies. This study adds the Logistics Performance Index of Latin American Integration Community countries (Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia); it was conducted to measure the effects of variables such as import, export, foreign capital investments (FDI), freedom of work, and freedom of investment. The data obtained for the study were analyzed in the Eviews package program. As a result of the analysis, the fact that exports have a positive contribution to the logistics performance indices of the Latin American Integration Community countries, while imports have a negative effect, reflected the expected results from the study. It is among the contributions of the study to the literature that logistics performances are effective in attracting foreign capital investments to countries and that freedom of investment and freedom of work give results that support freedom indices.

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