Malaysia: Ranked 24th in latest GCR Report

Malaysia moved up one rung to be ranked 24th in this year’s World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), scoring high for its stable financial market and efficient market for goods and services.

The Geneva-based body noted that in a region plagued by corruption and red tape, Malaysia stands out as “one of the very few countries” that have been relatively successful at tackling these two issues, as part of its economic and government transformation programmes.

But the latest competitiveness ranking showed that Malaysia continues to lag behind Singapore, which retained its position as the second most competitive country out of 148 surveyed. Switzerland was ranked the world’s most competitive country. Rounding up the top 10 after Singapore are Finland, Germany, United States, Sweden, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The country’s efficient and competitive market for goods and services was ranked 10th, its well developed and sound financial market came in 6th and business-friendly institutional framework was at 29th. The report noted that the country ranks an “impressive” 8th for the burden of government regulation and a “satisfactory” 33rd in the ethics and corruption component of the Index, although there is room for improvement.

Malaysia’s transport infrastructure was ranked 15th for its quality, which GCR noted as a “remarkable feat in this part of the world, where insufficient infrastructure and poor connectivity are major obstacles to development for many countries”. The country’s private sector, which was ranked 20th, was deemed to be “highly sophisticated” and “fairly innovative”.

“All this bodes well for a country that aims to become a high-income, knowledge-based economy by the end of the decade,” it said.

However, it noted that the country still has room for improvements, singling out the government’s deficit budget at 4.3% of the GDP in 2012, low female participation in the workforce and comparatively low technological readiness as two of its major competitive weaknesses.

Source: Malaysia Insider, September 04, 2013 04:17 pm