Malta’s competitiveness suffers from inadequately educated workforce and inefficient government bureaucracy

Malta did improve in the global competitiveness index drawn up by the World Economic Forum, published yesterday, coming in the 40th place, improving by eight places in just one year.

But a closer look at the rankings would remove any trace of complacency.

Malta does impressively well in the technological readiness ranking, ending as the 20th worldwide, and even better in the health and primary education ranking (18th) followed by the macroeconomic environment (21st), the basic requirements (29th).

Goods market efficiency ranks at 30th while the institutions and higher educational training both come at 38th.

Infrastructure is at a par with Malta’s over-all ranking (40th) as is business sophistication while as to innovation, financial market development and labour market efficiency Malta actually ranks worse than in its overall ranking (41st).

The result also indicate which factors are those which hinder Malta’s competitiveness, starting with inadequately educated workforce, followed by inefficient government bureaucracy, access to financing, poor work ethic in national labour force, insufficient capacity to innovate, restrictive labour regulation, inadequate supply of infrastructure, tax rates, corruption, tax regulations, and other minor causes.

As said, Malta ended up in the 40th place in the Index. It is surpassed, among others, by countries such as India, Kuwait and Azerbaijan while countries like Indonesia, Panama, Russia and Italy follow behind it.

Switzerland, Singapore and the US kept their positions as first, second and third respectively.