Saudi Arabia climbs up in WEF’s global competitiveness ranking

Saudi Arabia has jumped three notches since last year to rank as one of the most competitive economies in the Arab region, according to the latest Global Competitiveness Report 2019 by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Kingdom, the largest Arab economy, jumped three places to 36th, out of 141 countries, in the WEF’s annual ranking with a score of 70 out of 100.

“Saudi Arabia is making strides to diversify its economy: the non-oil sector is expected to expand in 2019, and further public and private investments outside the mineral sector will be deployed over the next few years,” WEF noted.

According to WEF, the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) covering 141 economies is the product of an aggregation of 103 individual indicators, derived from a combination of data from international organizations as well as from the WEF’s opinion survey.

Indicators are organized into 12 ‘pillars’: Institutions; Infrastructure; ICT adoption; Macroeconomic stability; Health; Skills; Product market; Labor market; Financial system; Market size; Business dynamism; and Innovation capability.

The UAE remained the most competitive economy in the Arab world ranking 25^th globally. Singapore overtakes the US to rank as the most competitive economy globally, followed by the US and Hong Kong at the second and third place, respectively.

Ten years on from the global financial crisis, the global economy remains locked in a cycle of low or flat productivity growth despite the injection of more than $10 trillion by central banks, WEF noted in the report.

This year, the report finds that, as monetary policies begin to run out of steam, it is crucial for economies to boost research and development, enhance the skills base of the current and future workforce, develop new infrastructure and integrate new technologies, among other measures.

Write to Sunil Kumar Singh at sunil.kumar@argaamplus.com