PH competitiveness still poor but improving

The Philippines moved up a notch in the 2017 World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) rankings, climbing 41st from 42nd last year out of 63 economies, in spite of the “impressive” jump in its economic performance, results showed.

The yearbook, published by the International Institute of Management Development (IMD), evaluates economies based on 346 criteria in four broad categories: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

In the four categories, the Philippines was pulled down by its rankings in government efficiency and business efficiency, which dropped by one and four notches, respectively. Economic performance, on the other hand, jumped 12 places, while infrastructure moved up one rank.
The drop in business efficiency was attributed to the decline in the sub-factors for productivity and efficiency (36th to 52nd), labor market (4th to 5th), management practices (24th to 28th), and attitudes and values (12th to 18th), in spite of improving from 35th to 33rd in finance.

In government efficiency, the country dropped to 37th from 36th mainly due to the fall in tax policy (15th to 18th) and societal framework (43rd to 51st), which dampened the rise of public finance (34th to 25th) and central bank policy.

“The worst ranked indicator in this sub-factor is food costs (58th), due to the large share of food costs in final household expenditure,” the policy brief read, explaining the five-notch decline of the prices sub-factor.