Building on four decades of experience in benchmarking competitiveness, the World Economic Forum published the
Global Competitiveness Report 2019 that offers insights into the economic prospects of 141 economies.
The assessment of the drivers of productivity and long-term economic growth is made taking into consideration 103 indicators organized into 12 themes (pillars) that cover broad socio-economic elements including institutions, infrastructure, adoption of information and communication technologies, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labour market, the financial system, market size, business dynamism and innovation capability.
Despite its seventh place last year, Hong Kong SAR is on the third place overall in 2019, overtaking all EU Members and such jurisdictions as Japan, Switzerland or the UAE.
As it follows, Hong Kong SAR features in the top 10 of eight pillars – a record – and outperforms the OECD benchmark on every pillar. Hong Kong is ranked first on four pillars – the most of any economy – in which it is at, or near the frontier score of 100: Macroeconomic stability (100), Health (100), Financial system (91.4) and Product market (81.6).
The experts points out at two main factors that do not allow Hong Kong to be ranked higher:
- Its limited capability to innovate;
- The lack of worker rights’ protection.
The Global Competitiveness Report is designed to help policy-makers, business leaders and other stakeholders shape their economic strategies in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
