‘Say you deserve the Asian Cup, where did the rankings fall?’
The World Competitiveness Rankings (WCR) report by the International Management Development Institute (IMD) for 2022 saw Malaysia fall 7 places to 32nd position.
The decline was due to the slower reopening of the economy after COVID-19 relative to the European Union (EU) and the United States (US).
Accompanying Malaysia was Thailand which fell to 33rd out of 28th while Indonesia slipped 44th from 37th.
The world's largest economy, China, also dropped to 17th due to the 'zero-COVID' policy which was implemented to curb the spread of coronavirus, forcing the closure of major cities in the country.
According to a footnote on the report, China needs to restructure the economy in terms of manufacturing, high -value services, investment to consumption.
Even so, China remains dominating the Asia-Pacific economy (APC) followed by Singapore in 3rd place, Hong-Kong 5th and Taiwan 7th.
It is understood that Singapore's achievement, which is ranked 3rd out of 5th, is due to the recovery in its domestic economy, employment, public finance and productivity and efficiency.
Meanwhile, India became the country with the sharpest increase among Asian economies which rose to 37th out of 43rd due to its excellent economic performance gains and business efficiency.
IMD Chief Economist Christos Capolis commented that most of the world's economies are still trying to recover from Covid-19 which affected the country's competitiveness.
Moreover, the factor of Russian aggression on Ukraine also adds to the economic slowdown of countries in Europe in particular.
