PH’s competitiveness improves

We are optimistic that with our ongoing reform initiatives with the enactment of the EODB/ Efficient Government Act, and efforts to promote government technology, the country will move us further closer to the frontier.

DTI Secretary RAMON LOPEZ

The Philippines’ ranking in the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) significantly improved to 56th from 68th place in a report released recently by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The 2018 GCR covers 140 economies representing 99% of global GDP and 94% of world population. Philippines is one of the few countries which gained double digit increase in its ranking.

This year’s GCR adopted a new index called the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 (GCI 4.0), which is a “composite indicator” with 98 indicators distributed across 12 pillars. GCI 4.0 derived its results from data providers such as the World Bank, WTO, IATA (air connectivity), ITC (for tariffs) and the Executive Opinion Survey administered by the World Economic Forum. The GCI 4.0 uses a “distance to frontier” approach in which performance is evaluated against the frontier of 100.

DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez noted the brand new methodology of the Global Competitiveness Index and supported the call for governments to address the factors that will fully capture the dynamics of the global economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, namely resilience, agility, human capital, and innovation.

“From day one, the Duterte Administration has worked on various reform initiatives to improve the country’s competitiveness. The recent positive performance in the refined GCI is a testament of the fruits of all of these reform initiatives, and we are gearing up for better. We are optimistic that with our ongoing reform initiatives with the enactment of the EODB/ Efficient Government Act, and efforts to promote government technology, the country will move us further closer to the frontier,” Lopez said.