Thailand ranks 38th in latest WEF index
India slips to No.58 in WEF rankings
Thailand climbed two spots to 38th place in this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) global competitiveness index 4.0 rankings of 140 nations.
The kingdom saw its score edge up from 66% last year to 67.5%.
The global competitiveness index (GCI) 4.0 measures national competitiveness — defined as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity — and captures determinants of long-term economic growth on a scale from one to 100.
The United States topped this year’s list with a score of 85.6% followed by Singapore with 83.5%. Germany was 3rd (82.8%), Switzerland 4th (82.6%) and Japan 5th (82.5%).
Associate Professor Pasu Decharin, dean of the faculty of commerce and accountancy at Chulalongkorn University, an official partner of the WEF, said the results showed that Thailand is making strides to secure its place in the fourth industrial revolution.
Thailand’s key strength is its financial system, he added. In this section of the survey, Thailand ranked 14th with a score of 84%.
It scored highly for its availability of capital, credit services, variety of financial products, financial risk diversification system, financing of SMEs, financial support for start-ups, and the soundness of its banks.
Thailand ranked 18th for market size with a score of 74.8%. This is attributed largely to the strong accessibility of its market for both domestic and foreign companies which has boosted domestic consumption, investment and exports.
In looking into how the country could move closer to fully accomplishing the fourth industrial revolution, the survey pointed to its product market, Mr Pasu said.
Thailand ranked 92nd in this category with a score of 53%. It ranked 44th for its labour market with a score of 63%.
The survey also noted that free competition and less red tape or eased regulations to spur innovation would fuel further improvements in its overall score.
Meanwhile, the country ranked 66th on the list in terms of “education and skills” with a score of 62.99%.
Comparing to other countries that make up the Asean+3 bloc, Thailand ranked 6th out of 12 countries after Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and China.
Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak said the government has tried to keep the momentum of economic growth going this year. The International Monetary Fund said in June it expects that to continue in 2019 fuelled by tourism and exports of manufacturing goods.
GENEVA: Switzerland’s nine-year streak as the world’s most competitive economy came to an end yesterday, dethroned by the United States in an annual league table published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
A root-and-branch revamp of the WEF’s rankings, reoriented towards future technology-driven growth, pushed Switzerland into fourth place, with Singapore second and Germany third out of 140 countries, each marked on a scale from 0 to 100.
Overall, the US scored an average of 85.6 points when the nearly 100 indicators were measured on a scale of 0 to 100, and was followed by Singapore and Germany. Switzerland meanwhile landed in fourth place, with a score of 82.6.
On average, countries around the world scored 60 points on the ranking — a full 40 points away from what WEF considers the optimal conditions for a competitive economy.
“The US is an innovation power house,” she said. “The country does well in terms of labour markets, it does well in terms of market size and it does fairly well in terms of institutions.”
Zahidi meanwhile said “there are also a l ot of worrying signs for US competitiveness.’’
She pointed to the country’s low score in terms of participation by women in the labour force, where it ranked 37th, as well as 40th place in terms of press freedom.
WEF also stressed the “importance of openness for competitiveness,” including low-tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade and ease of hiring foreign labour.
The old rankings had docked marks from the US for its macroeconomic environment, high government debt being a particular weakness. But the new rankings awarded it 99.2 for “debt dynamics”, an almost perfect score.
WEF experts denied that the analysis had been remodelled to flatter US President Donald Trump, who topped the bill at the WEF’s annual meeting at Davos in January, bringing his “America First” message to the world’s elite.
“The old index and the new index are apples and oranges. The reason the new index has been built is because we’ve learned so much about what drives economic growth and growth in income in the long term,” Zahidi said.
“The 98 indicators in the index were drawn from international organisations and a survey of company executives and largely reflected long-term policies such as investing in digital skills,’’ she said.
“That means Switzerland could take a while to win back its crown. The country was a pillar of innovation but needed to work on its entrepreneurial mindset.
“You need to be able to have this ability to take risks and to use some of these newer technologies to actually create businesses. And not just to create businesses but to take them all the way from idea to actual commercialisation,” Zahidi said.
Further down the rankings, China was in 28th place, Russia was 43rd, but India was 58th, a big slide from 40th under the old methodology last year.
Saudi Arabia came 39th, a placing that “could potentially be affected” by the unfolding story of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Zahidi said.
The bottom 30 were almost exclusively African countries, although Haiti and Yemen squeezed ahead of last-placed Chad, which scored 35.5.