Thailand drops to 39th in competitiveness

Of 142 economies, Thailand ranked 39th, falling one place from the previous year and from 36th place in 2009.

Thailand is doing the worst in the area of innovation and sophistication, in 51st place, which contributed 10 per cent of the weighting.

In terms of basic requirements, it ranks 46th. In health and primary education it ranks 83rd, in institutions (including government agencies) 67th, and in infrastructure it is in 42nd place. Macroeconomic environment pulled the country's overall basic-requirements index up to 46th place.

In terms of efficiency enhancers, technological readiness is ranked the lowest at 84th. Despite large market size, at 22nd, and labour-market efficiency, at 30th, poor scores in technological readiness and higher education and training pulled down the efficiency index to 43rd.

Globally, Switzerland, Singapore and Sweden top the Global Com-petitiveness Report ranking while the United States continues the decline it began three years ago, falling one more place to fifth position. Northern and Western European countries dominate the top 10 with Sweden third, Finland fourth, Ger-many sixth, the Netherlands seventh, Denmark eighth and the United Kingdom 10th. Japan remains the second-ranked Asian economy at ninth place, despite falling three places since last year.

The results show that while competitiveness in advanced economies has stagnated over the past seven years, in many emerging markets it has improved.

China (26th) continues to lead the way among large developing economies, improving by one more place and solidifying its position among the top 30.

Among the four other BRICS economies, South Africa (50th) and Brazil (53rd) move upwards while India (56th) and Russia (66th) experience small declines.

In Asia, Hong Kong (11th) joins Japan in the top 20.