China is 22nd, South Africa 53rd , Brazil 56th.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: The United States remains the best place to conduct business, according to the 2015 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, which was released Wednesday.
Hong Kong and Singapore were placed 2nd and third, respectively. India is ranked 44th — the same as last year — while China moved up a place to 22nd.
RELATED LINK: IMD World Competitiveness Scoreboard
The United States maintained its position “at the top of the ranking as a result of its strong business efficiency and financial sector, its innovation drive and the effectiveness of its infrastructure,” the Lausanne, Switzerland, -based IMD said in a press release.
The organization said the ranking reflected “more than 300 criteria,” with a third of the points based on a survey of 6,234 global business executives and two-thirds based on “statistical indicators.”
IMD’s Competitiveness Yearbook estimates “how well countries manage all their resources and competencies to facilitate long-term value creation.”
A lack of improvement in India’s ranking indicates that despite a change in government, the global business elite has not yet changed its opinion about the country’s economy.
Overall, IMD ranked 61 economies. Here’s how some of other major economies fared (ranking is in parenthesis): Switzerland (4), Canada (5), Norway (7), Denmark (8), Sweden (9), Germany (10), Taiwan (11), UAE (12), Qatar (13), Malaysia (14), Australia (18), United Kingdom (19), Israel (21), South Korea (25), Japan (27), Thailand (30), France (32), Poland (33), Russia (45), Indonesia (42), South Africa (53), Brazil (56) and Ukraine (60).
IMD said one commonality among the top-ranked nation is the business efficiency factor — nine of the top 10 are also in the top 10 in that category. Business efficiency, as defined by the organization, “focuses on the extent to which the national environment encourages enterprises to perform in an innovative, profitable and responsible manner.”
“Simply put, business efficiency requires greater productivity and the competitiveness of countries is greatly linked to the ability of enterprises to remain profitable over time,” said Arturo Bris, director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center. “Increasing productivity remains a fundamental challenge for all countries.”