Global Competitiveness Index, 2019

On 9 October, 2019 the World Economic Forum (WEF) released the Global Competitiveness Index 2019 also hailed as GCI 4.0. The report is based on 12 set of factors that determine productivity i.e. institutions; infrastructure; ICT adoption; macroeconomic stability; health; skills; product market; labour market; financial system; market size; business dynamism; and innovation capability.

Major Findings

• Singapore is the world’s most competitive economy in 2019, pushing the US to the second place.
• Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) is ranked 3rd, followed by Netherlands and Switzerland at 4th and 5th rank respectively
• China is ranked 28th (the highest ranked among the BRICS).
• Vietnam at 67th rank registered the highest improvement on the Index.
• Asia-Pacific has been found to be the most competitive region in the world because of the presence of many competitive countries in this region. Asia-Pacific is followed closely by Europe and North America.
• The study highlighted that the global economy is unprepared for a major slowdown.
• India’s Performance: India’s rank at 68 is 10 places down from the last year’s rankings and is also among the worst-performing BRICS nations along with Brazil (ranked at 71st). India performed better on – shareholder governance, corporate governance, macroeconomic stability and market size whereas it performed poorly on – ICT adoption, healthy life expectancy, trade openness and labour market laws.