Impact of Covid-19 on Logistics Sector in Pakistan

Abstract

The biggest crisis of the 21st century came in the form of a pandemic that started as a deadly virus stopped the whole world’s operations. Pakistan was not an exception to this phenomenon. While being closest to the outbreak being neighbor to China, the virus outbreak reached Pakistan months after the initial global pandemic declaration. The virus affected the world including Pakistan by affecting all forms of industry and other related aspects. The transportation and logistics in Pakistan were directly affected during the pandemic. The transportation sector was halted and reshaped during the pandemic, not only the transportation but the passengers changed their travelling behaviour after the pandemic. The logistics sector was focused towards provision and movement of good relating to prevention of COVID but when the COVID arise certain limitations upon international borders implemented that cause a lot of damages to world economy. In this research paper it is studied through the help of primary search that how important is Pakistan’s geographical location with respect to air, land and ocean freight and has its importance with respect to international trade. The routes are explained that are used for logistics and transportation purposes i.e. land, sea, and air routes. And due to COVID when these routes get restricted was there any effect on the country’s economy. The significance of the Pakistan trade routes has been studied in this research paper. The importance of Pakistan’s logistics and transportation with respect to international economy has been studied in this research paper and with the arrival of COVID the lockdown impeded restrictions to these sectors in Pakistan as well. The cause and effect of COVID has been studied in this research paper has been analysed through the help of Stata (statistical software). Besides this as Pakistan is among the developing countries so billions of people use public transportation for their daily travelling and with the COVID arrival this sector also get restricted by the govt of Pakistan that effected in such a way the movement of people via public transport also get banned this also cause a lot of economic damages because more than 40% of people living in Pakistan are below from the poverty line. As transportation side also play a handy role in the movement of goods inside the country that’s why importance of local as well as international transport has also been studied inn this research paper. This research has explained different aspects of how COVID pandemic affected the logistics sectors i.e. air freight, land freight and ocean freight in different ways. The need for understanding these implications and to overcome them with the help of creating countermeasures.