Countries by Transport services (% of service imports, BoP)

Ranking 2024

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric measures transport services as a share of total service imports, expressed as a percentage. Transport services, as defined by the World Bank source note, covers the process of carriage of people and objects from one location to another as well as related supporting and auxiliary services, and also includes postal and courier services. Service imports are services provided by non-residents to residents. The indicator code is BM.GSR.TRAN.ZS. The ranking covers 191 countries, with 184 of 191 (96.3%) having data from the last seven years and 100% of datapoints rated as official quality. Data recency for the 2024 reference year reaches 78.5% of countries.

The top of the ranking is dominated by landlocked nations, small island states, and conflict-affected economies. Djibouti leads at 87.4%, followed by Afghanistan at 83.8% (rank 2) and the Turks and Caicos Islands at 83.1% (rank 3). Haiti (rank 4, 76.1%) and Sudan (rank 5, 71.0%) round out the top five. Greece is the highest-ranked advanced economy at rank 9 with 63.2%, reflecting its outsized shipping sector. Lithuania (rank 41, 45.6%) and Denmark (rank 60, 39.8%) also appear in the upper half, consistent with significant maritime activity.

The middle of the ranking includes large emerging economies: China sits at rank 105 with 27.5%, Indonesia at rank 123 with 25.0%, and Brazil at rank 136 with 21.9%. The United States ranks 155th at 18.4%, and major European economies cluster in the lower third, with Germany at rank 148 (20.1%), France at rank 159 (17.8%), and the United Kingdom at rank 188 (10.2%). Ireland is a notable anomaly at the very bottom, rank 191, with just 1.4% — far below every other country in the dataset and more than eight percentage points below the next lowest, Andorra at rank 190 with 9.1%.

This metric captures transport as a share of service imports, not in absolute volume. A high percentage may reflect a narrow overall service import base rather than large transport flows. Countries with diverse, high-value service import sectors — such as financial or digital services — will tend to score lower regardless of their actual transport activity. The 16 extreme outliers identified at the 3-sigma threshold, including Ireland at the bottom, may reflect structural differences in how services are classified and reported. Comparability across countries can be affected by differences in national accounting methodologies.

Methodology

Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code BM.GSR.TRAN.ZS, reference year 2024. The metric is defined using the source note verbatim: transport services covers the process of carriage of people and objects from one location to another as well as related supporting and auxiliary services; also included are postal and courier services; the indicator is expressed as a percentage of service imports which are services provided by non-residents to residents. The ranking covers 191 countries, exceeding the 80-country coverage threshold. Data recency: 184 of 191 countries (96.3%) have data from the last seven years; 150 of 191 (78.5%) have data from the latest reference year (2024). Data quality: 100% of datapoints are classified as official. The dataset contains 16 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 11.8%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. The value range runs from 1.38% (Ireland) to 87.43% (Djibouti), a spread of 6,244%.

Sources

• World Bank