How competitive do you think India is when compared to other countries?
If you are thinking India is better placed than most of the other countries, you are wrong. India is ranked a lowly 49th in the world when it comes to competitiveness !
A comprehensive report released by World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks 133 economies on various parameters to arrive at Competitiveness rankings.
Switzerland has overtaken USA to become the most competitive economy in the world, followed by United States, Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada and Netherlands in that order respectively !
The Top 50 Competitive Economies in the world
The Global Competitiveness Index 2009–10 rankings and 2008–2009 comparisons
© 2009 World Economic ForumCountry/Economy GCI
2009–10GCI
2008–09
Rank*Rank Score Switzerland 1 5.60 2 United States 2 5.59 1 Singapore 3 5.55 5 Sweden 4 5.51 4 Denmark 5 5.46 3 Finland 6 5.43 6 Germany 7 5.37 7 Japan 8 5.37 9 Canada 9 5.33 10 Netherlands 10 5.32 8 Hong Kong SAR 11 5.22 11 Taiwan, China 12 5.20 17 United Kingdom 13 5.19 12 Norway 14 5.17 15 Australia 15 5.15 18 France 16 5.13 16 Austria 17 5.13 14 Belgium 18 5.09 19 Korea, Rep. 19 5.00 13 New Zealand 20 4.98 24 Luxembourg 21 4.96 25 Qatar 22 4.95 26 United Arab Emirates 23 4.92 31 Malaysia 24 4.87 21 Ireland 25 4.84 22 Iceland 26 4.80 20 Israel 27 4.80 23 Saudi Arabia 28 4.75 27 China 29 4.74 30 Chile 30 4.70 28 Czech Republic 31 4.67 33 Brunei Darussalam 32 4.64 39 Spain 33 4.59 29 Cyprus 34 4.57 40 Estonia 35 4.56 32 Thailand 36 4.56 34 Slovenia 37 4.55 42 Bahrain 38 4.54 37 Kuwait 39 4.53 35 Tunisia 40 4.50 36 Oman 41 4.49 38 Puerto Rico 42 4.48 41 Portugal 43 4.40 43 Barbados 44 4.35 47 South Africa 45 4.34 45 Poland 46 4.33 53 Slovak Republic 47 4.31 46 Italy 48 4.31 49 India 49 4.30 50 Jordan 50 4.30 48
Here are some of the highlights of the report:
India Specific Key indicators
- Population (millions), 2008…………………………….1,186.2
- GDP (US$ billions), 2008……………………………….1,209.7
- GDP per capita (US$), 2008 …………………………..1,016.2
- GDP (PPP) as share (%) of world total, 2008 …..…….4.77
GDP per Capita
The most problematic factors for doing business in India
(click on picture to see details)
With the kind of Population we have, I dont think we can ever overcome the fact that, India will always be behind when it comes to Infrastructure. But like China has shown, it can be improved to a large extent – not sure when will we see it.
After Infrastructure, biggest hurdles to do business in India is Government Bureaucracy and Corruption. Can we ever do away with them?
Here are the individual parameter rankings based on which the total competitiveness is derived from:
if you see the above chart, India ranks very well when it comes to its market size – yeah we are big :), but thats it. Even today, some 42 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day (in PPP international dollars), more than twice China’s equivalent figure.
India surprisingly, ranks well on innovation and sophistication factors, which are actually forte of more developed and richer countries. It ranks an outstanding 28th in the most complex areas measured by the business sophistication and innovation subindex, ahead of several advanced economies.
India also boasts fairly well functioning institutions (54th), bustling financial markets (16th), and a sound banking sector (25th)
However, India ranks very poorly on some of the basic determinants of competitiveness, namely health and primary education (101st), macroeconomic stability (96th) and infrastructure (76th).
The biggest surprise to me however was the penetration rates of Mobile Telephony – India is ranked at 116th out of 133 countries, so much for being 2nd largest mobile phone market !
Penetration of Internet and personal computers are also one of the lowest with a ranking of 104th and 96th respectively.
Take that for Indian competitiveness !
You can download full 492 page report for all countries from here.
Comments
Competitiveness comes from meritocracy. India is a reservationocracy.
By the definition of reservation, there will not be any meritocracy and hence no competitiveness. It’s a vicious cycle.
How true….and we really cant afford reservationocracy at this point, but who will tell that to our Babu’s and their vote politics leading to reservationocracy..
Too far away India in global index.. India is growing & side by side corruption.
India’s competitiveness is from its skilled work force, its adequate resources…which are fast getting depleted now…its high time we get our conscious right..and contribute to the growing of the economy….
gud
Comments