The Philippines climbed 12 places to become the 56th most competitive among 140 economies in the world this year.
The country’s ranking in the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum improved from its 68th spot last year. The report covered 140 economies representing 99 percent of global GDP and 94 percent of the world population.
The Philippines is one of the few countries which gained double-digit increase in its ranking. Its performance improved as measured by its overall distance to frontier score of 62.1 in the 2018 GCI versus 59.8 last year.
It posted improvements in all pillars and maintained its good macroeconomy stability performance with a DTF score of 90.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez noted the brand new methodology of the Global Competitiveness Index and supported the call for governments to address the factors that will fully capture the dynamics of the global economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, namely resilience, agility, human capital, and innovation.
“From day one, the Duterte Administration has worked on various reform initiatives to improve the country’s competitiveness. The recent positive performance in the refined GCI is a testament of the fruits of all of these reform initiatives, and we are gearing up for better,” Lopez said.
“We are optimistic that with our ongoing reform initiatives with the enactment of the EODB [East of Doing Business], Efficient Government Act, and efforts to promote government technology, the country will move us further closer to the frontier,” said Lopez.
The country also scored high on e-participation index (93.82) under Pillar 1: Institutions. The e-participation index measures an economy’s use of online services to facilitate provision of information by governments to citizens (e-information sharing), interaction with stakeholders (e-consultation), and engagement in decision-making processes (e-decision making).
Lopez noted the relatively lower scores across all countries when it comes to mastering the innovation process, from idea generation to product commercialization.
He said recent government efforts pointed to this track through the Inclusive Innovation Industrial Strategyas well as the Inclusive Filipinnovation & Entrepreneurship Roadmap.
