India jumps 16 notches.
India climbed 16 notches to climb to the 39th position in the world, while Pakistan remained last among South Asian nations in the Global Competitiveness Report by the World Economic Forum.
Ranked 122 in the list if 138 countries, Pakistan remained among the bottom 20 nations based on its Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). However, Pakistan has managed to recover marginally from its position last year when the country was placed at 126th in the list of 140 nations.
Despite the improvement in GCI ranking compared to last year, statistics show that Pakistan’s score is still below the 2007 level when the country was under the rule of military general Pervez Musharraf.
Meanwhile, being the highest rising economy, India climbed 16 places to reach 39th rank. Switzerland, Singapore, and the United States remain the world’s most competitive economies according to the report.
While Pakistan remained one of the bottom 20 nations, other South Asian countries showed better performance with Sri Lanka ranked 71, Bhutan 97, Nepal 98 and Bangladesh106.
The World Economic Forum takes 114 global competitiveness indicators into consideration for the preparation of the report. Pakistan showed improvement on 54 indicators, whereas the country lost its position on 50 indicators. Its position on 10 indicators remained the same as last year.
Along with the global competitiveness indicators, the report also considers 12 categories of pillars of competitiveness related to the country showing its competitiveness. These pillars are institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation.
Pakistan has shown improvement on key indicators such as police services, competition commission of Pakistan, Intellectual Property Organization and the performance of National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.
But, the country’s rank in many areas like quality of infrastructure, performance of state institutions, quality of port infrastructure and air transport, quality of primary education, and capacity to retain talent has gone down during the year.
Corruption is identified as the most problematic factor for doing business in Pakistan followed by crime and theft, tax rates, access to finance and government instability.