India Jumps 5 Spots in World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index

For 2018, India’s rank rose by five places in World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness index from 2017 and India  now ranked as the 58th most competitive economy.

US is at the top place in this index. As per World Economic Forum,  India’s rise is the largest gain among G20 economies

World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index 4.0

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 4.0 is a composite indicator which analyses  the group of factors that affects the economy’s level of productivity.

This is considered to be the most important determinant of long-term growth. The GCI 4.0 comprises of 12 main drivers of productivity, which includes Infrastructure, Technological readiness,  Macroeconomic factors, Health, Education and skills, Product and  Labour market, the Financial system, Market size, etc.

Ranking Of BRICS & Developed Economies

This index includes 140 economies. US being in the top position on the index is followed by Singapore and Germany at the second and the third positions respectively.

India is ranked 58th with a score of 62.0 as per the latest Global Competitiveness Report. China is ranked at the 28th position in the overall list with a score of 72.6, which is ahead of the Russian Federation (65.6, 43rd), India (62.0, 58th), South Africa (60.8, 67th), and Brazil (59.5, 72nd).

India, however, remained the “South Asia’s main driving force. As per the report, the top performers in the “upper and lower middle-income brackets”, such as China and India, are fast catching up with or even outperforming the average among high-income developed countries.

China, leads for investments in research and development than the average high-income economy, and India is not far behind.

Further, India is leading in all the other areas of competitiveness except for health, education and skills. Sri Lanka has the highest healthy life expectancy (67.8 years) and the workforce with the highest amount of schooling (9.8 years). India and Sri Lanka are also the ones that can rely on the most efficient infrastructure system.

India has invested heavily on transport infrastructure and services and Sri Lanka has the most modern utility infrastructure

According to the report, India’s greatest competitive advantages are its market size, innovation and business dynamism.  However, India is required to improve in the areas like labour market (particularly workers rights), product market (in particular trade tariffs) and skills (in particular pupil-teacher ratio).

Other countries in the top 10 of WEF‘s global competitiveness index includes, Switzerland (4th), Japan (5th), Netherlands (6th), Hong Kong (7th), United Kingdom (8th), Sweden (9th) and Denmark (10th).