India maintains 43rd rank on IMD’s World Competitiveness Index

Context

India maintained 43rd rank on an annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by the Institute for Management Development (IMD).

• This year, the rankings expose the economic impact of the pandemic across the globe.

About the IMD’s World Competitiveness Index

• The IMD World Competitiveness Ranking ranks 64 economies and assesses the extent to which a country promotes the prosperity of its people by measuring economic well-being through hard data and survey responses from executives.
• The ranking is produced annually by the IMD World Competitiveness Center.
• It measures the prosperity and competitiveness of 64 nations by examining four factors —
  • economic performance
  • government efficiency
  • business efficiency
  • infrastructure

Key-highlights of the ranking

• The top five nations are Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, and Singapore.
• Taiwan reached the top-10 for the first time since the ranking began 33 years ago (moving up from 11th last year).
• The UAE and the USA remain in the same spots as last year (9th and 10th, respectively).
• The top-performing Asian economies are, in order, Singapore (fifth), Hong Kong (seventh), Taiwan (eighth), and China (16th).
• Among the BRICS nations, India is ranked second after China (16), followed by Russia (45th), Brazil (57th), and South Africa (62th).

Reason for the upward shifts of countries

• The qualities such as investment in innovation, digitalization, welfare benefits, and leadership, resulting in social cohesion have helped countries better weather the crisis the best and thus ranked higher in competitiveness.