Looking up Climbing up

The Philippines continues to inch 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 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 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—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.

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.

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