WEF ranks Pakistan at 107 among 140 countries

Islamabad: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Pakistan at 107 among 140 countries on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI).

The forum released the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 this week adopting a new methodology for measuring Competitiveness 4.0. by including indices which represents more knowledge and digital-based ecosystems.

The new methodology is a reboot of the Index. However, to give a comparison with the old Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) methodology, the WEF has given a ranking called the backcasting, where Pakistan has shown improvement and ranked at 106 this year compared to 115 in 2017.

Amir Jahangir, CEO Mishal Pakistan and the Country Partner Institute for the Future of Economic Progress System Initiative, World Economic Forum, said the new methodology had been able to capture the business dynamism and innovation capability of Pakistan and helped the country in achieving significant gains.

He however said the factors for enabling environment and the human capital had also identified the competitiveness gaps in the economy. “Pakistan as well as India demonstrate the region’s lowest levels of technological readiness, confirming the challenge for large emerging economies to fully integrate their entire population, especially those living in the most remote areas into modernization processes,” he said. He said Pakistan had also shown significant improvements in collecting the soft-data through the Executive Opinion Survey, with a sample size of 629, Pakistan represents the second largest contributor to the Competitiveness 4.0 Index after India.

According to him, on the 12 Pillars of Competitiveness, among 140 countries, Pakistan ranks at 109th on institutional infrastructure (93), ICT adoption (127), marco-economic stability (103), health (109), skills (125), product market (122), labour market (121), financial system (89), market size (31), business dynamism (67) and innovation capacity (75).

The changing nature of economic competitiveness in a world that is becoming increasingly transformed by new, digital technologies is creating a new set of challenges for governments and businesses, which collectively run the risk of having a negative impact on future growth and productivity.

Among the South Asian nations, India is leading at 58, with Sri Lanka 85 and Bangladesh at 103 and Nepal at 109. According to the report, which in 2018 uses a brand new methodology to fully capture the dynamics of the global economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, many of the factors that will have the greatest impact in driving competitiveness in the future have never been the focus of major policy decisions in the past.

These include idea generation, entrepreneurial culture, openness, and agility. The new tool maps the competitiveness landscape of 140 economies through 98 indicators organized into 12 pillars. For each indicator, using a scale from 0 to 100, it indicates how close an economy is to the ideal state or “frontier” of competitiveness. When combining these factors, the United States achieves the best overall performance with a score of 85.6, ahead of Singapore and Germany. The average score for the world is 60, 40 points away from the frontier.

One of the report’s most concerning findings is the relative weakness across the board when it comes to mastering the innovation process, from idea generation to product commercialisation.