Australia remains outside world top 20 competitive countries:
WEF GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS REPORT 2017-18
Australia has again ranked outside the world’s 20 most competitive countries according to the 2017-18 World Economic Forum (WEF) Global competitiveness report released today.
The top 10 ranked countries all have strong engagement with advanced manufacturing value chains despite having different mixes of competitive strengths.
Australia moved up one place to 21st since last year and has been stuck outside the top 20 since 2013-14. However, there are important shifts in the mix of underlying issues driving Australia’s ranking.
A big detractor of competitiveness this year was a sharp rise in concerns over policy and political instability. Also detracting from Australia’s performance was a worsening ranking of the adequacy of infrastructure particularly in communications and energy infrastructure. These areas combined with the more entrenched areas of restrictive labour regulations, high tax rates and a relatively poor ranking of innovation were the major inhibitors of our competitiveness.
Higher education and training remain a key strength, as does financial market development and the primary education and health of the workforce.
A link to the Australian WEF findings is available here – the full WEF competitiveness report is available here.