The UK has been named the world's fourth-best logistics performer.

A study by the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index (LPI) ranked 160 nations on a number of trade dimensions, including infrastructure quality and customs performance. It saw Britain move up six places this year, compared to 2013's ranking of tenth.

Germany came out on top, with the Netherlands and Belgium close behind. The top ten was completed by Singapore, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg the United States and Japan. Meanwhile, China came in at number 28, while Russia was 90th.

Jean-Francois Arvis, senior transport economist and founder of the LPI, stated: "In countries with high logistics costs, it is often not the distance between trading partners, but reliability of the supply chain that is the most important contributor to those costs."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, high-income countries performed better, however nations such as Kenya, Rwanda and Malawi showed significant improvements. At the other end of the scale, the bottom three were named as Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.