UAE tops Arab world in innovation index

abu dhabi — The UAE has been ranked first in the Arab world in this year’s edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII). Ranked 38th globally for innovation, the country also ranked 24th in the innovation input pillar.

The positioning across these indices reflects the significant improvements in knowledge and technology outputs, business sophistication, market sophistication and infrastructure. For example, these pillars include increases in indicators such as government online services, intensity of local competition, gross expenditure on research and development financed by business and foreign direct investments net outflows.

The objective is to position the UAE as one of the top 10 innovation leaders in the world. Some of the initiatives being rolled out include the move to unlock intellectual property attractiveness; the promotion of a unified network aimed at encouraging fundamental research collaboration between universities, private sector, and government; identifying,

The global ranking of the UAE for innovation

connecting and tracking the impact made by these innovationbased initiatives; and the move to bolster the financing of innovation for all UAE companies via venture capital.

The index, which is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation, measures the innovation-related performance of 126 countries and economies representing the vast proportion of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Sultan Al Mansoori, Minister of Economy, said the UAE’s position across the Arab World can be attributed to last year’s score growth rate of 10 per cent, which was one of the highest percentage score growth rates among all countries in the GII. Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden were the top three countries on the index. —news@khaleejtimes.com

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