Logistics are a critical element for country competitiveness and economic performance, including poverty reduction. Most emerging countries such as Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are focusing on export-led growth strategies and poverty reduction strategies, and their performance is adversely affected by their high logistic costs that range from 10% to 50% of product value. This book illustrates the relevance and impact of logistics on these areas while also offering an effective logistics and infrastructure framework that addresses the full spectrum of the productive chain (upstream, midstream and downstream). It provides a structured agenda for designing and implementing holistic policy interventions (soft and hard components) to reduce logistic costs. Featuring case studies and examples of specific interventions and their impact in many countries, a number of them in Latin America, this book is useful to scholars, academics, practitioners and policy makers interested in the reduction of logistics costs and poverty reduction in the global economy.

Jose Luis Guasch, a PhD in Economics from Stanford University, USA and Engineer form the Polytechnical University of Barcelona, Spain, is a renowned international expert in logistic and public-private-partnerships (PPP) currently assisting countries and lecturing on international conferences on improving countries logistic and PPP platforms. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, San Diego (USA). Previously, he was for many years Head of the World Bank Global Expert Group in PPP and Logistics as well as Senior Regional Advisor for the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., were he was responsible for the areas of competitiveness, regulation, logistics, infrastructure, innovation and technological development. He has advised over 80 countries particularly on Logistic and PPP. and has published extensively on those themes.