Steady ranking
PH places 56th in global competitiveness
THE Philippines ranked 56th out of 137 economies worldwide in the latest World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, basically holding steady versus its ranking of No. 57 last year. The country maintained its score of 4.4 on a scale of 7.
Among the strong areas of performance for the Philippines was its macroeconomic environment, ranked 22nd in the work. The country is ranked highly in such areas as inflation management (1st), government debt as a percentage of GDP (33rd), country credit rating (48th), and, government budget balance as a percentage of GDP (24th).
The Philippines also improved performance in higher education (from 58th to 55th), quality of primary education (75th to 66th), labor market efficiency (from 86th to 84th), and market size (from 31st to 27th). Market size reflects both an increase in population and consumer power.
In the Financial Markets category, the country was also cited for its soundness of banks (35th) and Regulation of securities exchanges (36th). However, in spite of the soundness of the banking system, the country received moderate downgrades in the areas of financing through local equity markets (from 30th to No. 38th), ease of access to loans (46th to 54th), and venture capital availability (65th to 70th).
In the Technological Readiness category, the country was cited for im- STEADY, 14