Malaysia's global competitiveness ranking up a notch

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has improved its ranking by one notch in terms of global competitiveness, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2018.

The report, which was released on Wednesday (Oct 17), sees Malaysia placed 25 out of 140 countries.

Due to a change in methodology which was "backcasted" using the weighted averages of both 2016 and 2017, Malaysia improved its ranking by one place compared with last year where it was placed 26th out of 135 countries.

Malaysia once again took the second spot among nine Southeast Asian countries.

Thailand was ranked 38th followed by Indonesia (45), the Philippines (56), Brunei Darussalam (62), Vietnam (77), Cambodia (110) and Laos (112).

The most competitive country in the world went to the United States as it achieved a competitiveness score of 85.6.

In second place was Singapore (83.5) followed by Germany (82.8), Switzerland (82.6), Japan (82.5), Netherlands (82.4), Hong Kong (82.3), the United Kingdom (82.0), Sweden (81.7) and Denmark (80.6), which round up the top 10.

The report also said Malaysia was one of the three non-high-income countries that were featured in the top 40 of the list.

The other two countries were China and Thailand in 28th and 38th place, respectively.

The World Economic Forum's report this time around introduces the new Global Competitiveness Index 4.0, by integrating the notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) into the definition of competitiveness.

The report benchmarks countries according to its 12 pillars of competitiveness.

The 12 pillars are institutions, infrastructure, ICT adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labour market, financial system, market size, business dynamism and innovation capability.

Malaysia's best performing index was its macroeconomic stability where it achieved a perfect score of 100. The country's other best achievements were listed as its financial system and its business dynamism.

However, Malaysia scored low in the health component where it achieved a ranking of only 62 out of 140 countries.

The report also cited that Singapore was most "future ready" for the 4IR followed by Luxembourg and the United States.

Malaysia was listed as ninth in the list as being most "future ready".