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 Forum
Country/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.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
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
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