Malaysia continues to rank among 25 most competitive nations

Malaysia ranks at 24th position in the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2017 compiled by The Institute for Management Development (IMD), World Competitiveness Centre based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Despite a decline from 19th position last year, Malaysia remains in in the top 25 most competitive nations among 63 economies including Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, USA and Netherlands.

In this latest ranking, despite being overtaken by Finland, China, Ireland, Israel and Belgium, Malaysia continues to be ahead of Austria (25th), Japan (26th) and Korea Rep. (29th). Malaysia is ranked as 2nd most competitive economy within ASEAN as well as among 32 economies with GDP per capita less than USD20,000.
The IMD World Competitiveness Center, a research group at IMD business school in Switzerland, has published the rankings annually for the past 29 years. It compiles them using 261 indicators – 143 ‘hard’ data such as national employment, GDP growth and trade statistics; and 118 data from an Executive Opinion Survey. An additional 85 indicators are ranked and presented as background information. The WCY 2017 assessed economies based on four competitiveness factors: Economic Performance, Government Efficiency, Business Efficiency and Infrastructure.
Press-release at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) of Malaysia official web-site