Philippines drops in World Giving, Digital Competitiveness indexes

MANILA, Philippines — Fewer Filipinos said they have helped a stranger, donated money to charity or volunteered for an organization last year.

The World Giving Index 2023 showed that the Philippines dropped from 20th to 98th worldwide.

The latest index by the United Kingdom-based Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) is based on the 2022 data from Gallup’s World View World Poll, which surveyed almost 150,000 people from 142 countries.

The country score is based on three key items: helping a stranger, donating money to a charity and volunteering to an organization.

The Philippines obtained an average score of 34, down from 47 in the 2022 index, which was based on 2021 data.

Based on the Gallup data, fewer Filipinos said they participated in charitable acts.

Only 57 percent of Filipino respondents said they helped a stranger in 2022, down from 75 percent in the previous year. Donating money to charity significantly dropped from 26 to 12 percent, while volunteering dropped from 39 to 34 percent.

The Philippines ranked 65th in the index released in 2021 and 33rd in 2019.

The report did not provide an analysis of the Philippines’ decline in the latest poll. But globally, CAF said the average score of 39 is just one point lower than last year’s 40, “indicating that the increase in global giving seen during the pandemic has been broadly maintained.”

“The CAF World Giving Index gives us reasons for hopeful optimism at a time of great instability. Generosity is innate to human behavior and binds us all together as a global community. The diversity of countries leading the index highlights this: they cover the spectrum of wealth and economic development, geography, language, religion and culture,” said CAF chief executive Neil Heslop.

“That is why we are calling on governments to do more to encourage those who can, to give the money and time that fosters vibrant, resilient civil society organizations as they face social and environmental challenges and the impact of conflict and population displacement,” he added.

Based on the index, Indonesia again topped the list with a score of 68, followed by Ukraine (62), Kenya (60), Liberia (58), United States (58), Myanmar (57), Kuwait (57), Canada (54), Nigeria (53) and New Zealand (53).

On the bottom at 142nd was Poland with a score of 15, followed by Croatia (18), Yemen (18), Japan (18), Greece (18), Afghanistan (20), Cambodia (23), Lebanon (23), Vietnam (23) and Bulgaria (23).

The report noted several factors that influence generosity, as people “who have a strong religious belief have a higher overall giving index score, except for Europe where it makes no difference.”

“People who rated their life in positive terms were more likely to have made a gift to charity, with some of the happiest countries in the world ranking in the top 10 for donating money,” the report stated.

“Immigrants are more likely to give than nationals, particularly in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Those who say they were born in another country tend to have a higher index score than nationals on average in most regions,” it added.

Phl drops 3 spots in digital competitiveness

The Philippines dropped three spots in the World Digital Competitiveness ranking of the International Institute of Management Development (IMD) as it posted declines in the factors of knowledge, technology and future readiness.

In its 2023 World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, IMD ranked the Philippines 59th out of 64 countries, lower than last year’s 56th ranking.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines ranked 13th out of 14 countries.

The Philippines dropped to 63rd from 62nd in 2022 in the knowledge factor, which measures the know-how needed to discover, understand and build new technologies.

The country also fell to 51st from 49th in the technology factor, which measures the overall context that enables the development of digital technologies.

In contrast, the country improved its ranking in the technology sub-factor of technological framework, ranking 43rd from 45th last year.

the future readiness factor, which measures the level of country preparedness to exploit digital transformation, the Philippines dropped to 59th from 58th.

The USA ranked first in this year’s World Digital Competitiveness, followed by the Netherlands and Singapore.

“While we measure no specific AI indicators, the technology sits silently at the core of several of the subfactors that we quantify: talent, regulatory and technological frameworks, and adaptive attitudes and business agility,” said IMD World Competitiveness Center director Arturo Bris.

The IMD noted that of the 4,000 senior executives worldwide who responded to the survey, only five percent said they had not implemented any new cybersecurity measures in the past year.

The 2023 World Digital Competitiveness rankings studied 64 economies — including Kuwait for the first time — by looking into three main factors: knowledge, technology, and future readiness. These are broken down into nine sub-factors, comprising a total of 54 criteria that are quantified using both hard data and survey responses from executives. — Catherine Talavera