Global competitiveness: Philippines up 5 notches

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines continues to claw its way up the world competitiveness rankings as it climbed five notches in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Competitiveness Index 2015-2016.

The country ranked 47th among 140 economies this year, an improvement from its 52nd spot among 144 countries last year, a WEF report released yesterday showed. The ranking last year was seven notches higher than the previous year’s spot.

The WEF competitiveness ranking is measured based on how institutions, policies and other factors affect the level of productivity of a country.

The Philippines got the highest ranking in terms of macroeconomic environment followed by market size and business sophistication.

The country, however, lagged in terms of infrastructure, labor market efficiency and goods market efficiency.

In emerging and developing Asian economies, the report revealed that competitiveness trends are mostly positive, despite the many challenges and profound intra-regional disparities.

China and most of the Southeast Asian countries performed well, while South Asian countries and Mongolia continued to lag behind.

The WEF report said the five largest members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Malaysia (18th), Thailand (32nd), Indonesia (37th), the Philippines (47th) and Vietnam (56th) – all rank in the top half of the overall Global Competitiveness Index rankings.

“Our report finds worrying signs that a new normal of suppressed economic and productivity growth and persistently high unemployment is damaging resilience and leaving the world vulnerable to another protracted slump,” the WEF report read.

“Here, emerging markets represent the greatest cause for concern, with many of the larger markets seeing reverses this year, having failed to enact crucial institutional and market reforms during better times (India being the notable exception),” it said.

“In Europe, we see improvement in many southern economies, helping narrow slightly the region’s north-south divide. Access to finance remains the key challenge across the region, however,” the WEF report stated.

“In Asia, three economies – Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong – appear in the top 10; the ASEAN bloc continues to perform strongly and China holds steady on 28th,” it added.

Foreign business groups welcomed the positive improvement in the country’s global ranking, but noted that there are still plenty of things that the Philippines needs to address to be totally competitive.

“It’s good to see the country’s further improvement in the survey but there is obviously the need to immediately focus on the most problematic factors, with the lack of infrastructure being the biggest danger to the competitiveness of the country’s economy,” European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines  vice president for external affairs Henry Schumacher said.