JEDDAH, 27 May 2004 — Taiwan ranks 12th in overall competitiveness, up five notches from last year’s ranking of 17th, according to the Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development’s “IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2004” published earlier this week. Taiwan ranked 17th, 16th and 20th in 2000, 2001 and 2002, respectively.
Published annually since 1989 in cooperation with a global network of partner institutes now numbering 57, the report features analyses and rankings of national and regional economies in terms of how well their environments create and sustain the competitiveness of enterprises. The United States remains the most competitive nation, followed by Singapore, Canada, Australia, Iceland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden and Taiwan.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan is the fourth most competitive economy, behind Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong, up a notch from last year, according to Taiwan’s Riyadh-based Information Division Director Fareed Hwang Jieh-Shan.
Among economies, each with over 20 million population, Taiwan ranks fourth, the same as last year, after the United States, Canada and Australia. Among economies, each with fewer than 20 million population, Singapore ranked first followed by Iceland, Hong Kong, Denmark and Finland.
The yearbook evaluates the competitiveness of an economy based on 323 criteria grouped into four major categories — economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. Each category is in turn divided into five sub-factors. In the category of business efficiency, for instance, the sub-factors are productivity, labor market, finance, management practices, and attitudes and values. Analyses are based both on hard data, which accounts for about two-thirds of the evaluation weighting, and the personal evaluations in an executive opinion survey of nearly 4,200 respondents worldwide.
In the category of government efficiency, Taiwan moved up from 20th place last year to 18th place this year, while its business efficiency rose from 11th to 7th place, and its infrastructure advanced from 23rd to 20th place. The report also showed Taiwan to be strong in patent rights protection, credit card issuance numbers and market adaptability.