The News:
- India has slipped 10 places to rank 68th on Global competitiveness index, compiled by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF).
About: Global Competitiveness Index
- The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), launched in 1979, has been mapping the competitiveness landscape of 141 economies through 103 indicators organised into 12 pillars.
- It is a composite indicator that assesses the set of factors that determine an economy’s level of productivity – widely considered as the most important determinant of long-term growth.
- The 12 main drivers of productivity for the index:
- Institutions
- Infrastructure
- Technological readiness
- Macroeconomic context
- Health
- Education and skills
- Product market
- Labour market
- Financial system
- Market size
- Business dynamism
- Innovation
News Summary:
- As per the latest rankings, India has slipped 10 places, from 58th in 2018 to 68th in 2019.
- India is among the worst-performing BRICS nations along with Brazil (which has ranked 71st this time).
- Note: BRICS is an acronym to represent Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, seen as the world’s fastest growing developing economies.
- However, India is ahead of its neighbours Sri Lanka at 84th place, Bangladesh at 105th place, Nepal at 108th place and Pakistan at 110th place.
Parameters on which India performed well:
- Macroeconomic stability
- Market size
- Corporate governance
- Shareholder governance
- Market size
- Renewable energy regulation.
- Innovation: In Innovation, India is well ahead of most emerging economies and on par with several advanced economies.
Why India’s rank has slipped?
- There are major shortcomings in some of the basic enablers of
competitiveness in India, which has led to India’s low ranking. These
include:
- Technological readiness: Information, communication and technology (ICT) adoption in India has been weak;
- Health: Poor health conditions and low life expectancy
- Labour market: Lack of worker rights’ protections, insufficiently developed active labour market politics and critically low participation of women with female workers to male workers of 0.26.
- The slowdown in the Indian economy is also having a negative effect on the country’s global rankings.
- Better performance by other countries: The improvements in economic and business activities in other world economies also led to India’s low ranking this year.
More from the latest report
Top Rankers of GCI 2019:
- Singapore
- United States
- Hong Kong SAR
- Netherlands
- Switzerland
Asia-Pacific is most competitive region:
- The report showed that presence of many competitive countries in Asia-Pacific makes this region the most competitive in the world, followed closely by Europe and North America.
- China is ranked 28th (the highest ranked among the BRICS), while Vietnam is the most improved country in the region this year at 67th place.