This paper is devoted to the Nernst-Planck system of equations with an external potential of confinement. The main result is concerned with the asymptotic behaviour of the solution of the Cauchy problem. We will prove that the optimal exponential rate of convergence of the solution to the unique stationary solution is determined by the spectral gap of the linearized problem around the minimizer of the free energy. The key issue is to consider an adapted notion of scalar product.