By Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat

The Philippines topped the world ranking in high-tech exports, but the country’s overall score in the global digital competitiveness improved only by a notch to 55th from 56th last year out of 63 countries ranked in knowledge and future readiness factors, latest survey showed.

Now on its third year, the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2019 (WDCR), produced by the IMD World Competitiveness Center, measures the capacity and readiness of 63 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government and wider society.

To evaluate the economy, the WDCR examines three factors: Knowledge or the capacity to understand and learn the new technologies; Technology or the competence to develop new digital innovations; and future readiness or the preparedness for the coming developments.

Overall, the Philippines improved its ranking only in the technology factor to 55th from 58th last year but slightly declined its rankings in knowledge factor to 51st from 50th, and future readiness to 54th from 52nd.

But the Philippines ranked first in high-tech exports. The country also showed strengths in terms of high-tech patent grants where the country ranked 12th out of 63 countries. It also ranked higher in graduates in sciences where it ranked 13th and female researchers at 7th place. In addition, the Philippines has a higher score on investment in telecommunications at 15th. The Philippines managed to advance in these areas despite the country’s overall weakness in total expenditure on research and development where it ranked 59th out of 63 countries.

Globally, the WDCR reported that the United States held on to the number one spot with all top five economies in the ranking unchanged: USA, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland.

Singapore comes 2nd, securing top place in the technology factor, 3rd in knowledge and 11th in future readiness. Singapore’s strongest performance at the sub-factor level was in talent and technological framework, ranking 1st in both. It also ranked highly in training and education and IT integration (4th in both).

Notably, Asian countries made strong strides in World Digital Competitiveness ranking.

The largest increases in the overall ranking was led by China, moving from 30th to 22nd, and Indonesia, from 62nd to 56th. In the case of China, the improvement originated mainly in the knowledge factor (18th) in which it progressed in the training & education sub-factor (from 46th to 37th) and in scientific concentration (21st to 9th). For Indonesia, its progress was driven largely in the technology factor (47th) with improvement in executive perceptions about the effectiveness of its regulatory framework (57th to 51st) and about the availability of capital for technology development (34th to 26th).

Hong Kong SAR moves up to 8th from 11th in 2018. Hong Kong ranked the highest in technology (4th) and placed 7th in knowledge. Under knowledge, its highest spot was in talent – 4th – and its lowest in scientific concentration, 16th. In technology, Hong Kong ranked 3rd in the technological framework sub-factor and 12th in the regulatory framework.

Republic of Korea broke into and rounded up the top 10, rising from 14th in 2018. Its strongest performance was in the future readiness factor (4th) in which it ranked 4th in the adaptive attitudes sub-factor and 5th in business agility but placed at 21st in IT integration.

For Taiwan, China (13th) there was a positive trend in executive perceptions about talent availability and access to capital. Taiwan also experienced improvements in the future readiness factor (22nd to 12th) particularly in terms of business agility (13th to 3rd).

Malaysia, which ranked 26th, has overall strengths in graduates in science (6th) and women with degrees (4th). India advanced four places to 44th position in 2019, with the biggest improvement in the technology sub-factor level, holding first position in telecommunications investment.