Vietnam ranks 77th in Global Competitiveness Index

Vietnam ranked 77th out of 140 economies worldwide in the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 which was released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on October 17.

Vietnam scored the highest points in the "health" pillar while the "innovation capacity" got the lowest points (illustrative image)
Vietnam scored the highest points in the "health" pillar while the "innovation capacity" got the lowest points (illustrative image)

In this year's Global Competitiveness Index Vietnam dropped three places compared to the previous year at 74th out of 135 countries. However, Vietnam scored 58.1 points in the 2018 ranking, a slight increase compared to the previous year at 57.9 points.

Compared with other countries in the region, Vietnam was behind Singapore (2nd), Malaysia (25th), Thailand (38th), Indonesia (45th) and the Philippines (56th), but came ahead of Brunei (62nd), Cambodia (110th) and Laos (112th).

The WEF said that the methodology to assess economies has changed comprehensively in this year's ranking towards valuing growth based on technology.

The competitiveness of an economy is evaluated based on 12 pillars: institutions, infrastructure, information and communication technology adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labour market, financial system, market size, business dynamism and innovation capacity.

Vietnam scored the highest points in the "health" pillar at 81 points, while the "innovation capacity" got the lowest at 33 points.

The top five competitive countries in the 2018 ranking were the US, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland and Japan.