Ukraine’s competitiveness on the global stage has improved in some areas but appears to have faltered overall, according to findings released on Oct. 9 in a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The Global Competitiveness Report 2019, in which the WEF publishes its assessment of the competitiveness of 141 countries worldwide, puts Ukraine in 85th place, having dropped two places overall in comparison to the previous year.
But the findings also demonstrate that most countries around the world are still not realizing their full competitive potential: “The results of the GCI… in 2019 reveal that, on average, most economies continue to be far from the competitiveness “frontier”— the aggregate ideal across all factors of competitiveness,” states the report.
According to the report’s so-called performance overview for 2019, Ukraine has improved in some areas. Its labor market and state institutions are slightly better and the level of skills and education among the population has shown improvement.
Ukraine’s commodity market has improved substantially, according to the report, while the country’s ranking in infrastructure and technology implementation have remained largely the same.
But the report also draws attention to various areas in which Ukraine’s competitiveness has faltered or regressed. Macroeconomic stability has dropped two places; the level of health care has dropped seven places.
The financial system has faltered badly this year, according to a Liga.net article citing data comparisons from this report and the last. The financial sector was ranked 117 last year, and is now ranked 136, dropping 19 places.
“The report demonstrates that 10 years on from the financial crisis, while central banks have injected nearly 10 trillion dollars into the global economy, productivity-enhancing investments such as new infrastructure, R&D and skills development in the current and future workforce have been suboptimal,” reads another extract from the report.
Another global competitiveness report published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) back in May, had a slightly better outlook for Ukraine, concluding that the country had risen five positions to 54 out of 63 countries ranked.
But according to the WEF, Ukraine’s overall global competitiveness now ranks just below Albania, North Macedonia, Argentina and Sri Lanka, and just ahead of Moldova, Tunisia, Lebanon and Ecuador.
Meanwhile, Estonia is still the best-performing country from the former USSR, ranked 31. The worst is Tajikistan in 104th place.
More broadly, Singapore, the U.S. and Hong Kong take the top spots in this year’s ranking, while Chad, Yemen and the Congo are together at the bottom.
