Saudi Arabia, Turkey improve on competitiveness ranking of 63 economies, UAE falls four places
Only Saudi Arabia and Turkey improved their positions among the eight Islamic countries on the IMD 2020 world competitiveness ranking of 63 economies.
The rankings are produced by Switzerland- and Singapore-based International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center. Scores are based on four key metrics: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. Each of the four are broken down into many criteria. IMD says “hard data”, that carry a weight of two-thirds in the overall rankings, are accompanied by data from its annual Executive Opinion Survey.
In a statement on Tuesday (June 16), IMD said the 2020 rankings do not pick up on events from the last couple of months.
Among the eight Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia moved up two places to 24th and Turkey jumped from 51st last year to 46th.
The Middle East’s biggest economy improved markedly on economic performance (from 30th in 2019 to 20th this year), business efficiency (25th to 19th), and infrastructure (38th to 36th).
Turkey was up across three metrics: government efficiency (from 55th to 51st), business efficiency (48th to 36th), and infrastructure (46th to 43rd).
The United Arab Emirates, the top-ranking Islamic country, fell from 5th place last year to 9th this year. UAE dropped in rankings in business efficiency (from 1st to 7th) and government efficiency (2nd to 3rd).
“The Middle East struggled as a region, reflecting the oil crisis,” said IMD.
Qatar is the second highest ranking Islamic country on the 63-nation list, dropping from 10th to 14th.
The other Islamic countries on the ranking are Malaysia (down five places to 27th), Indonesia (down 8 to 40th), Kazakhstan (down 8 to 42nd), and Jordan (down 1 to 58th).
Overall, Singapore retains its top position for the second year in a row.
IMD said factors behind Singapore’s success are its strong economic performance that stems from robust international trade and investment, employment, and labour market measures. “Stable performances in both its education system and technological infrastructure – telecommunications, internet bandwidth speed and high-tech exports – also play key roles,” said IMD.
The island-state is trailed by Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Hong Kong.
The 63 economies are chosen based on the “availability of comparable international statistics” and its own “local partner institutes”, according to IMD.
The rankings have been published since 1989. This year, new criteria were added to reflect the importance of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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