Competitiveness down

Published since 1989 by Switzerland’s Institute for Management Development (IMD), of which the Asian Institute of Management is a working partner, the annual World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) is a widely respected assessment of the world’s 57 most competitive “countries.” Thirteen of the 57 are economies in the Asia-Pacific. For years the USA has been No. 1. HK and Singapore have been competing for No. 2 place in the WCY.

IMD should not say “countries” but “territories.” This is because Hong Kong is a “special administration region” of China. And Taiwan, though economically and politically independent from the mainland, is not the entire country of either the Republic of China or the People’s Republic of China. HK was No. 3 in the 2008 WCY and now No. 2. Taiwan, No. 13 last year, is now down to No. 23.

The Philippines fell by three rungs to No. 43. We were No. 40 in 2008.

This is sad but not too bad, considering that much of our fall is due to the bad global economic situation. And our overall score in this 2009 report is 50.490, which is a bit up from our score of 50.478 in 2008. Last year, though, we surged five places from our No. 45 position in 2007.

IMD uses 329 criteria to assess a country’s (or territory’s) competitiveness in terms of economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and the infrastructure. It uses hard data and opinion polls. IMD’s executive opinion survey was completed by 3,960 respondents worldwide.

WCY 2009 sees the Philippines as having a robust economic forecast (we ranked 20th in this factor) simply because we are not going to have negative growth while most other economies will.

The Philippines again scored high in business efficiency, particularly our labor market at 5th place; attitudes and values, 29th; and management practices, 30th.

Nevertheless, we Filipinos—in the government and in the private sector—should redouble our efforts to make our country really more competitive.

Stress Test introduced

For 2009, IMD decided to add an additional ranking—the “Stress Test on Competitiveness” which gauges which “countries” are better poised to farewell in the current global crisis and improve their competitiveness in the immediate future.

In the Stress Test, the USA which is No. 1 in the WCY only ranks 28th while Denmark is No. 1. The Philippines ranks 32nd, which is only four notches below the USA. We are seen to be more resilient and better equipped to ride out the crisis and become more competitive in the near future than Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Colombia, Slovenia, Mexico, Lithuania, Portugal, Estonia, France, South Africa, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Greece, Spain, Russia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine, Argentina and Venezuela.

“The Stress Test shows that smaller nations, which are export-oriented, resilient and with stable socio-political environments are better equipped to benefit immediately from the recovery,” said Professor Stephane Garelli, director of the IMD World Competitiveness Survey, in a statement