Quick review of WEF 2016/2017 report which ranks Malaysia now at 25th from 18th of our 138 countries. Areas for immediate focus include:
Secondary education enrollment rate
Tertiary education enrollment rate
Organised crime
Irregular payments and bribes
Business costs of terrorism
Total tax rate
HIV prevalence
Trade tariffs
Fixed broadband
Internet bandwidth
Redundancy cost
Female participation in workforce
Tuberculosis incidence
Where Malaysia has lost pace in the last 12 months include:
Health and primary education as a category dropped from 24th to 44th position. Focused dropped on higher education ie. enrollment of gross tertiary education dropped from 37% to 29%, quality of primary education and primary education enrollment
Goods market efficiency from 6th to 12th place, likely competition getting more efficient as India and European countries have improved their rankings overall
Business sophistication dropped from 13th to 20th. General across the board small movements in competition as to local supplier quantity, state of cluster development, value chain breadth and control of international distribution
All is not gloom, as Malaysia is positively still within top 10 of 138 countries on these sub indices:
Inflation
Strength of investor protection
Wastefulness of government spending; burden of government regulation
Pay and productivity
Venture capital availability
Country capacity to retain talent; extent of staff training
FDI and technology transfer; Govt procurement of advanced tech. products
Report can be downloaded here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2016-2017_FINAL.pdf
