Taiwan slips to 13th in global competitiveness rankings

Taiwan's ranking was one notch lower than its position last year. The decline was mainly attributed to the fact that Taiwan was below the top 20 in three categories, namely financial market maturity, job market efficiency and institutions.

Nevertheless, Taiwan still advanced to 35th from 50th in terms of financial market maturity, and leapt to 35th from 40th in terms of institutions. By contrast, its job market efficiency ranking retreated to 34th place from last year's 24th spot.

Jennifer Blanke, the chief economist of the WEF told a press conference in Beijing that Taiwan's scores in the survey remained almost the same as last year. The overall score stood at 5.21, compared to 5.20 in 2009. She also said that Taiwan might not be flexible enough in its labor market but this should not be serious problem.

Although suffering a one-notch fall, Taiwan still maintained a higher spot than its economic rival South Korea, which was 22nd on the list.

Singapore ranked the highest among the Asian states in third position overall, while Japan was sixth and Hong Kong 11th.

Taiwan earned high marks in the areas of infrastructure health, higher education, personnel resources, market efficiency and innovation. It was among the top 20 countries in nine of the 12 indices used to rate economies.

The three main factors that affect business operations are unstable government policy, government inefficiency, and taxation and foreign exchange policy, the survey showed.

Meanwhile, China rose two notches to 27th in the survey, ahead of India at 51st, Brazil at 58th, and Russia at 63rd — the three other states in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group.

Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore were ranked as the three top economies, in that order, while the United States fell two spots to fourth.

The rankings are calculated based on publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, which is a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the WEF together with its network of Partner Institutes in the 139 economies covered by the report.

In response to the WEF report, Christina Liu, chairperson of the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), said that although Taiwan slipped one spot in the global competitiveness ranking, its overall score has edged up to 5.21 this year from last year's 5.20, indicating the island's substantive competitiveness has advanced.

Liu said that the United Kingdom advanced one notch to 12th and Taiwan fell one spot to the 13th, mainly because the former has witnessed greater progress than Taiwan.

However, Liu stressed, Taiwan has performed better in the global competitiveness ranking than South Korea for three consecutive years.

Taiwan lagged behind South Korea by four notches in the ranking in 2008, but advanced on its rival by seven spots in 2009, and enlarged the gap further to nine places in 2010, according to Liu.

Liu also noted that Taiwan has ranked first in the area of innovation for three consecutive years, and ranked third in industrial clustering, all indicating Taiwan's great advantage in soliciting foreign enterprises to invest on the island.

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