Laos has slipped down to a ranking of 113rd out of 141 surveyed countries in the annual Global Competitiveness Report 2019, while several neighboring countries, including Vietnam, climbed up on the list thanks to improvements in economic and business activities.
The report, which is compiled by the World Economic Forum, contains the Global Competitiveness Index that integrates the macroeconomic and the micro/business aspects of competitiveness into a single index.
It also measures the set of institutions, policies, and factors that set the sustainable current and medium-term levels of economic prosperity to analyze how productively a country uses available resources.
The index is 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.
Laos achieved its best score in the “Infrastructure” pillar with the ranking at 93rd place. In particular, Laos performed well in the “transport infrastructure” section that measures the quality, connectivity, and efficiency of roads, railroads, liner shipping, and airports, although it still lags behind its peers in the Asia Pacific region.
The country saw its worst score from the “Business Dynamism” pillar that measures the quality of a country’s overall business networks and the quality of individual firms’ operations and strategies. Laos ranked 137th in this pillar.
Within the pillar, the country ranked 140th in the “time to start a business” section, which was measured based on the number of days taken to begin businesses. The 141st place went to Venezuela.
Led by Singapore, East Asia and the Pacific region is the most competitive in the world, followed by Europe and North America, according to the report. Vietnam, in particular, is the country whose score improves the most globally from 77th place last year to 67th spot.
Vietnam performed well in the three pillars, namely “Health,” “Macro-economic Stability” and “Market Size”.
