India rises a notch to 44th on competitiveness index, US tops list

India has moved up to 44th position on IMD’s World Competitiveness Ranking 2018, up one rank from last year.
 
The United States continues to be the most competitive country in the world, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, Netherlands and Switzerland.
 
IMD measures a country’s competitiveness based on its performance on four key pillars — economy, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.
 
The improvement in India’s performance over the past year can be traced largely to an improvement in infrastructure. The country is now ranked 56th on infrastructure, up from 60th last year. Much of this increase is due to an improved performance on basic and technological infrastructure. India ranked first in investments in the telecom sector.
 

Global Competitiveness Index

“The India government’s efforts help run businesses efficiently in India shows, as the rating improved by 5.22% (2018),” noted the report. However, while the country saw an improvement in investment activity, the report points to the fall in the country’s ranking on ‘domestic economy’ and ‘international investments’.
 
“Some of the challenges which India has to face for the year 2018 would be skilling of manpower and employment generation, streamlining the implementation of goods and services tax and balancing high growth with sustainable development goal,” it noted. 
 
It added that “digital literacy and adequate bandwidth at rural areas and mobilisation of resources for infrastructure development needs are a few key areas where the government needs to focus on.”