Philippines lags behind ASEAN neighbors in ICT network readiness

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has been identified as one of the laggards in the 2022 Network Readiness Index (NRI) in Southeast Asia, despite posting the biggest improvement in this year’s ranking.

The country ranked sixth with an NRI score of 48.06 among eight Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies, ahead only of Laos, which ranked seventh with a score of 39.45, and Cambodia, last (eighth) in the region with a score of 38.48.

Singapore ranked at the top in ASEAN with an NRI score of 79.35. It was also second in the overall ranking across the world, second only to NRI topnotcher and global superpower the United States, which garnered a score of 80.30.

Second placer in the ASEAN is Malaysia with a score of 60.58, followed by Thailand (56.56), Indonesia (51.51) and Vietnam (51.07).

The Philippines, however, has been credited as the biggest mover in the NRI rankings, jumping 12 notches from its 83rd rank to 71st of the world’s 130 economies that are most ready to go digital.

Rafael Escalona Reynoso, chief executive officer and secretary to the board of independent nonprofit research and education institution Portulans Institute that conducted the annual NRI rankings, said that while the Philippines was a laggard among ASEAN neighbors and in the broader Asian region in the rankings, the country showed a substantial increase in performance ratings on the four pillars measured – technology, people, governance and impact.?

With its improved performance, the Philippines was able to join all of the ASEAN, which were able to improve in their 2022 NRI rankings from last year.

In a presentation of the results focused on Southeast Asian economies’ performance during a virtual forum spearheaded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) yesterday morning, Reynoso emphasized that to the credit of the Philippines, it was an “outperformer” in the category for the lower middle-income countries.

“The Philippines was fifth among the income group, of the 36 economies in the same lower middle-income group,” he said.

“Being fifth is, I think, a very good position, and it outperforms in the four pillars to the whole group, being also an outperformer in 10 of the sub-pillars within the (four) different dimensions,” he added.

The Philippines also had tough competition in its broader Asia-Pacific regional bloc, according to Reynoso.

“When we think about region, then the Philippines ranks 13 among 21. However, you need to understand the way that the regions are organized in the NRI – it sets a little bit of a handicap. I mean, giants like China (are) there, but nonetheless, I think that this is a very promising position for the Philippines that is telling us a lot of the results that happened post-pandemic,” he said.

“Of course, there is also the other side of the coin that shows areas for improvement. Here, we have more within the governance segment and a few others within technology, impact and people,” he added.

Reynoso explained that the Philippines’ big move in the NRI showed that low middle-income countries seemed to have outperformed their other income category counterparts and “that some of the low-income and lower-income economies appear to be bouncing back faster ... that we saw from the pandemic.”

“So this is a very good opportunity to keep going in this track and ... highlight ... some of the elements that allowed this to happen,” he said.

The top three economies in the 2022 NRI are the US, Singapore and Sweden.

The rankings were notably dominated by high-income group countries, with the top 25 being developed countries.

China, which ranked 23rd overall, and Malaysia were noted to be two upper middle-income economies closing the gap in the NRI and gaining on the rankings.

The NRI was launched by the World Economic Forum in 2002 as part of the Global Information Technology Report. It was redesigned in 2019 to make it more reflective of current information and communications technology issues and more future-ready.