Tag:GS2 || Compilations || Reports and indices || Miscellaneous

Why in news?

• Now in its third year, the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking measures the capacity and readiness of 63 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government and wider society.

Details :

• The ranking is produced by the IMD World Competitiveness Center.
• To evaluate an economy, WDCR examines three factors: Knowledge, the capacity to understand and learn the new technologies; technology, the competence to develop new digital innovations; and future readiness, the preparedness for the coming developments.

Key performers:

• India rose from 48th place in 2018 to 44th rank this year.

• US was ranked as the world’s most digitally competitive economy, followed by Singapore in the second place.
• Sweden was ranked third on the list, followed by Denmark and Switzerland in the 4th and 5th place, respectively.
• Others in the list of top-10 most digitally competitive economy include Netherlands in the 6th place, Finland (7th), Hong Kong SAR (8th), Norway (9th) and Republic of Korea (10th).
• The largest jump in the overall ranking was registered by China, moving from 30th to 22nd, and Indonesia, from 62nd to 56th.

 Key trends:

• Many Asian nations showed significant growth from last year in digital competitiveness, as Hong Kong and South Korea entered the top 10 for the first time, Taiwan moved up to the 13th place and China made a huge jump from the 30th position to the 22nd.
• Indonesia also showed massive growth by rising to 56th rank from its 62nd rank in 2018. China showed significant improvement in the knowledge factor.
• India also showed significant improvement by jumping up four places. In knowledge factor, India fared best in graduates in sciences and R&D productivity by publication.
• India fared best in the technology factor, especially in the telecommunications investment and IT& media stock market capitalization. India has to still, however, work on enforcing contracts, mobile broadband subscribers, wireless broadband and internet users.
• In future-readiness, India fared best in world robots distribution and requires to work more on tablet possession.