The Philippines improved its ranking by a notch to 48th place among 63 economies in the IMD World Talent Ranking 2020.
IMD, a business education school in Lausanne, Switzerland, said the Philippines performed well in both readiness and appeal factors, with rankings of 31st and 33rd, respectively.
The report evaluated the development, attraction and retention of human capital in 63 economies in the light of the impact of COVID-19 crisis and regional political changes in Europe including Brexit.
The IMD’s World Competitiveness Center takes a three-pronged approach in measuring talent in economies.
The investment and development factor measures the resources earmarked to cultivate a homegrown workforce while the appeal factor evaluates the extent to which an economy attracts foreign and retains local talent. The readiness factor measures the quality of the skills and competencies that are available in a country’s talent pool.
It said that on a regional level, the Philippines was behind Indonesia which ranked 45th but ahead of India at 62nd place and Mongolia at 63rd.
Among the highly ranked Asia-Pacific countries were Singapore at 9th, Australia at 13th, Hong Kong at 14th, Taiwan at 20th, New Zealand at 21st, Malaysia at 25th, Korea at 31st, Japan at 38th, China at 40th and Thailand at 43rd.
The report revealed that the APAC region was relatively stable in the last few years, with improvements from Singapore and the Philippines and small declines from Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
It said the poor performance of the Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Mongolia was partly due to slow increase in female participation in the labor force over the last few years, although they still perform poorly relative to other economies.
It said that in terms of public spending for education, every Asia-Pacific nation evaluated, with the exception of Singapore, had very low education expenditures per student in terms of US dollars. With the exception of Malaysia, the region also performed low in pupil-teacher ratios.
The top 5 economies in the IMD World Talent Ranking were Switzerland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Iceland and Sweden which have excellent education systems and therefore rank highly in the investment and development factor. Switzerland has been leading the report for four years in a row.