India’s Competitiveness Rankings

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 2009–10		GCI 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.