Australia global competitiveness rank climbs on commodity surge
A windfall from surging commodity prices helped lift Australia's global competitiveness ranking, a survey showed, even as the nation still scored poorly on technology, productivity and entrepreneurship.
Australia advanced 3 places to 19 out of 63 countries in the Institute for Management Development World Competitiveness Yearbook published Wednesday (Jun 15), having received its lowest ever ranking in 2021. Australia now sits behind Qatar in 18th place in the report, which is partnered locally by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA).
"Australia's terms of trade driven by strong commodity prices, employment numbers and pandemic recovery have saved the day - ensuring our international competitiveness ranking improved and did not slip further," said Melinda Cilento, chief executive officer of CEDA.
"However, it is clear when compared against the top performing countries, that long-term and well-known weaknesses in the policy environment are holding Australia back."
Australia has struggled to enact productivity-enhancing reforms for the past 2 decades as governments relied on a mining boom and rising asset prices to raise living standards. Economists argue the country needs to boost efficiency and outcomes in health and education as well as better tax its resource bounty.
Australia recorded its worst result in entrepreneurship, ranking 61 out of 63 countries, and dropped to 41 from 20 in workplace productivity, the report showed.
Cilento said Australian firms are far less digitally advanced than their global competitors while information technology is a much smaller contributor to the A$2.2 trillion (S$2.1 trillion) economy than among advanced counterparts.
Only 3 per cent of executives surveyed said that Australia was cost competitive and 5 per cent believed Australia had a competitive tax regime, the report showed.
"The rankings also suggest that Australia's export concentration remains an area of vulnerability," Cilento said. "Australia must lift its game on trade - diversifying its trading partners and continuing to build new markets for the goods and services in which we compete." BLOOMBERG
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