RP competitiveness slips, lags in region

The Philippines ranked lower in terms of global competitiveness this year and still lagged behind its Asian peers, according to the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook.

In its 2009 Yearbook, the Switzerland-based Institute of Management Development (IMD) said the Philippines ranked 43rd, or two notches down from last year, with a raw score of 54.490 among 57 countries.

“Our raw score has actually increased, but the problem is that two new countries were added—Qatar and Kazakhstan,” Ma. Lourdes Sereno, the executive director of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center, said Wednesday.

IMD ranked 57 economies from the most competitive to the least competitive, with scores from 0 to 100 based on 329 criteria measuring different facets of competitiveness.

The Philippines trailed Malaysia, which placed 18th; Thailand, 26th; South Korea, 27th; and Indonesia, with a dramatic change from 51st to 42nd.

It ranked higher in the following areas: growth in commercial services, foreign direct investments, cost of living index, tax revenue, central bank policy, aging of society, skilled labor, flexibility and adaptability, investment in telecommunications.

In “female position,” the Philippines ranked No. 1 in the world.

The competitiveness criteria included economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

The US remained on top, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Finland and The Netherlands.

With the US scoring 100, Hong Kong is in second place with a raw score of 98.146.

Acceptable showing

“We all have acknowledged the great stride we need to undertake to ensure that the country [rebounds] back to the competitiveness with the rest of the world,” said Ambassador Donald Dee, special ambassador for International Trade.

Considering the plight of other countries in the region and around the world that are heavily hit by the global economic crisis and political uncertainty, Dee added, the Philippines’ “slippage in the ranking by three notches from 40 in 2008 to 43 in 2009 is acceptable.”

What he found as “more alarming” was that since 2005, the Philippines’ economic performance has shrunk 15 notches, “making us a laggard in poverty alleviation in the region and in the equal distribution of income and wealth among the population.”

And while the country has proved that its economy is “one of the most resilient the world has ever known,” it continues to suffer from low per capita income, increasing the poverty base and lowering middle class participation.

Such suffering, Dee said, “can be attributed to the ever-increasing and unmanageable population growth whereby our per capita spending for social services shrinks year by year because of the painstaking necessity to allocate the meager resources to various welfare programs.”

“We need to find a common political ground in tackling our unmanaged population growth that eats up our GDP [gross domestic product] base and our long-term economic prospects,” he added. GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.

He suggested that effective programs, funding and attention be expanded to education infrastructure, housing and urban development, entrepreneurship and youth employment participation.

Dee said the government needed to work extensively with lawmakers to lessen adverse effects of politicking on the country’s ailing competitiveness standing. — Lailany P. Gomez With Ben Arnold O. De Vera, Manila Times