Philippines climbs in technological readiness ranking

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has improved in terms of its preparedness for technological change in the next few years.

The Philippines climbed to the 55th spot out of 82 economies tracked in the latest Technological Readiness Ranking published by the Economist Intelligence Unit on Tuesday.

The Philippines bagged a score of 5.5 and shared the 55th place with Colombia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Sri Lanka.

In Southeast Asia, the Philippines is the 4th most tech-ready economy.

The EIU’s latest ranking gauged how prepared governments, businesses and individuals are for digital disruption from this year until 2022 based on three key categories: access to the internet, digital economy infrastructure and openness to innovation.

In the EIU’s previous technological readiness rankings for 2013-2017, the Philippines scored 4.7 and tied for the 60th place with Morocco.

"As infrastructure development takes hold in the Philippines, it will ramp up the archipelago's technical readiness," the EIU analyst Anwita Basu said in an interview.

"The situation as it currently stands is not as favorable as compared to other countries in the region. However, we believe that the country will make steady progress in improving cyber security, creating e-government portals and raising internet connectivity speed, over the forthcoming years. These factors have led to a slight improvement in the country's forward looking rank," Basu added.

Australia, Singapore and Sweden topped the EIU’s new technological readiness ranking.

At the bottom of the index were Libya and Angola, where corruption and weak institutions have “stymied investment in infrastructure,” the EIU said.