Malta retains 41st place in World Economic Forum report
... but United States toppled from No.1 spot by Switzerland
Charlot Zahra
Malta’s annual ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s global competitiveness report 2009/2010 has remained the same when compared to the previous year’s report, at 41st place.
The WEF based its assessment on a range of factors, key for any country to prosper. The index included economic data such as growth, but also health data and the number of internet users.
The study also factored in a survey among business leaders, assessing for example the government’s efficiency and the flexibility of the labour market.
Globally, the report showed that economies with a large focus on financial services such as the United States (US), Britain and Iceland as being the losers of the crisis.
Switzerland knocked the US off the position as the world’s most competitive economy as the crash of the US banking system left it more exposed to some long-standing weaknesses.
The US, the world’s largest economy, lost last year’s strong lead on competitiveness, slipping to number two for the first time since the introduction of the index in its current form in 2004.
Jennifer Blanke, head of the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Network, said: “We have been expecting for some time that it (the US) may lose its top-position. There are a number of imbalances that have been building up.”
”There are problems on the financial market that we were not aware of before. These countries (such as the US and Britain) are getting penalised now,” she added.
The WEF applauded Switzerland for its capacity to innovate, its sophisticated business culture, effective public services, excellent infrastructure and well-functioning goods markets.
The Swiss economy dipped into recession last year and had to bail out UBS, its largest bank. But its economy was holding up better than many peers and most banks are relatively unscathed by the crisis, which drove US banks into bankruptcy.
The WEF said the US economy was still extremely productive but a number of escalating weaknesses were taking its toll.
The report warned that concerns were growing about the US government’s ability to maintain distance to the private sector and doubts had arisen about the quality of companies’ auditing and reporting standards.
Leading emerging markets Brazil, India and China improved their competitiveness in spite of the crisis, WEF report showed.
Russia, the other leading emerging country, however, saw one of the steepest declines among the 133 countries assessed by the WEF this year, falling back 12 places to 63, as worries about government efficiency and judicial independence rose.
After years of rapid improvement, which took it to 29th in the rankings, China now had to tackle shortcomings in areas such as financial markets, technological readiness and education as it could no longer rely on cheap labour alone to generate growth.
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