The Philippines ratings in 2019 global economic competitiveness
The Philippines is number 64 out of 141 participating economies under the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index. Should we be happy or sad about this?
If we compare ourselves to Singapore which got the number one place, we should feel very sad, being beaten by so tiny an island city-state, much smaller than Bohol in size. The top ten performers worldwide are Singapore with a rating of 84.8 out of a perfect score of 100, followed by the USA (83.7), Hong Kong (83.1), Netherlands (82.4), Switzerland (82.3), Japan (82.3), Germany (81.8), Sweden (81.2), UK (81.2), and Denmark (81.2). The Philippines, with a population of 107 million and a per capita income of 3,104 US dollars or roughly P161,388 a year means that our average monthly income of P13,449 or an average daily income of P561 a day. That is hardly enough for our basic needs.
Famous countries that are not in the top ten are Canada (14th), France (15th), China (28th), Russia (44th), and India (a poor 68th, even lower than us). The top ten most innovative economies in 2019 are Germany, US, Switzerland, Taiwan, Sweden, South Korea, Japan, UK, France, and Netherlands. We are very low in innovations. Our best performance is in Market Size where we got the 31st place and in Labor Market (39th). Our worst ratings are in Health (102nd), Infrastructures (96th), Information, Communication & Technology (88th) and Institutions (87th). We were average in Financial Systems (43rd), Business Dynamism (44th), Product Market (52nd) and Macro Economic Stability (55th).
We are not really the worst in the world, if we think of the lowest performing economies like Chad (141st), then followed by Yemen (140th) and so on followed by Congo, Haiti, Mozambique, Angola, Burundi, Mauritania, Venezuela (very unfortunate member of the G20 powerful nations), and Magadascar (132nd). Among the ASEAN nations, the performances from highest to lowest are: Singapore (number one in the whole world, highest in ASEAN), Malaysia (27th), Thailand (40th), Indonesia (50th), Brunei (56th, oh, the tiny one with less than 400,000 population), then the Philippines (64th, beaten by Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore again). Then followed closely by Vietnam (67th), Cambodia (106th), and Laos PDR (113th). Myanmar did not participate.
There are other worse performers were Peru (65th), Panama (66th), Serbia (72nd), Trinidad and Tobago (79th), Sri Lanka (84th), Ukraine (85th), Tunisia (87th), Kyrgyz Republic (96th), Rwanda (100th), Takijistan (104th), Pakistan (110th), Senegal (114th), Uganda (115th), Tanzania (117th), Zambia (120th), Eskawiti (121st), Ethiopia (126th), Zimbabwe (127th), Mali (129th). But the Philippines was beaten by smaller countries like Taiwan (12th), Qatar (29th), Portugal (34th), Slovenia (35th), Saudi Arabia (36th), Poland (37th), Slovak Republic (42nd), Romania (23rd), Spain (51st), Oman (53rd), Uruguay (54th), and Turkey (61st), and many others.
Why does a tiny country like Singapore have a per capita income of $64,000 while the Philippines only has $3,104? Our problem is overpopulation and very low productivity. Singapore is excelling because there are one hundred thousand highly-skilled Filipinos who are making that tiny city state the best performing economy in the world. It is time for us to think and to move forward.
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