Logistics matters
By Mondher Khanfir

There won't be enough for everybody, any longer! The opportunities for growth are less and less prolific, and success is from now onwards the lot of exceptional enterprises!

Why so? You might ask. Well, simply because the global offer of goods and services has become largely in excess of solvent demand. Unless it is really exceptional (by its innovation drive, its size or its market position), no enterprise will be able to promptly seize the rare opportunities that arise and, above all, before its competitors.

We thus witness increasing tightening of the constraints to which enterprises have become subjected, in matter of organisation, quality assurance, reduction of costs and flexibility. Part of such requirements, particularly in matter of support processes, now comes to be more and more sub-contracted or out-sourced.

Among the first services to have been out-sourced, one may mention storing, the conservation of products and the management of transport. They have come to belong under specialised enterprises which now find themselves faced with new professions that need to be mastered and new challenges that need to be met. Such enterprises or, more exactly, these logistics providers, now hold a new responsibility springing from their new prerogatives of flow managers, and this through the provision of diversified, if not integrated, services such as transit, maintenance, distribution, safety and tracing operations.

The logistics services providers, as true actors of the global logistics chain, are called upon to fall in with the mood of the new management technologies, in order to play a key role in the construction of the global performance.

By Logistics, we mean any action, technique, approach or strategy aimed at optimising the flows of goods and information all along the chain, starting with the supplier and running through to the final customer.

Today, a large part of our economic activity is related to consumption and is, therefore, closely connected with logistics. The Transport/ Logistics sector accounts, according to our own reckoning, for over 10% of GDP in Tunisia and represents tens of thousands of employment positions together with a similar contribution in development opportunities.

Being a veritable nervous system for the economy, logistics is a key sector which plays the role of a fulcrum of social stability and a lever of economic growth. The economic success and attractive appeal of Tunisia will not obtain without setting out an ambitious policy in matter of logistics. This is a far-reaching, exacting project that would call upon the active contribution of the entire key activities sectors of our country.

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