The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is an academic institute with campuses in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Singapore. It is well known for its MBA programme, which consistently ranks among the best in the world.
Denmark keeps the first Place
Within the research of the IMD World Competitiveness Centre, four factors are measured: business efficiency, infrastructure, government efficiency, and economic performance. Denmark maintained its first place from last year since its position is based on continuous achievements across all four competitiveness factors. Ireland made a remarkable leap from 11th to 2nd place, and it is largely the result of its stellar economic performance, where it rose from seventh to first.
Switzerland held the third position after dropping from second place in 2022 to first place in 2021. The country retains third place thanks to its strong performance across all competitiveness factors measured. It remains first for government efficiency and infrastructure, ranks seventh in business efficiency (a decline from fourth), and improves in economic performance (up to 18th from 30th). All three are small economies that make good use of their access to markets and trading partners.
Improvements after the Pandemic
The 2023 results also highlight how economies that were late to open up after the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to see improvements in their competitiveness (e.g., Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia). Those that were early to open up are now witnessing declines (such as Sweden and Finland).
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Europe excelled in the ranking, as in 2022, with five economies in the top 10. Apart from being smaller, the most competitive economies also tend to have strong and efficient institutions. “A country’s ability to generate prosperity for its people is a key determiner of success. It’s not what China does yet, and it’s not what the US even does fully yet,” the Director of WCC, Arturo Bris, explained.
In the top 10, Singapore dropped one position to fourth, the Netherlands moved up one place to fifth (from sixth), Taiwan and China gained one spot (up to sixth from seventh), and Hong Kong SAR fell to seventh (from fifth). The USA improved one place to ninth, and the UAE went up two places to take tenth.
Building resilient Economies
The ranking is a valuable tool for evaluating highly contrasting business environments and supporting international investment decisions. It serves managers and policymakers and is an indicator of the quality of life in each country. It is based on a mixture of hard data: 164 competitiveness criteria selected as a result of comprehensive research using economic literature, international, national, and regional sources, plus feedback from the business community, government agencies, and academics, and 92 survey questions answered by 6,400 senior executives.
Christos Cabolis, the WCC’s Chief Economist, explained, “Navigating today’s unpredictable environment requires agility and adaptability. Countries that excel at building resilient economies, such as Ireland, Iceland, and Bahrain. Their governments are also able to adapt policies based on current economic conditions in a timely fashion. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Singapore are also key examples of this.”
