KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia remains in the 22nd place, among 63 countries, in the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2019 published by IMD World Competitiveness Centre, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.
With a score of 82.54 out of 100 points, Malaysia kept its position for the second year, reflecting positive sentiments of the business community towards the new government, International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Darell Leiking said.
“The report showed improvements in institutional related indicators such as bribery and corruption, transparency, bureaucracy, justice, social cohesion and public finance in terms of rankings and value scored compared to the previous year.
“All these indicators increased in value score more than 10%, ranging between 10.8% in public finances to 31.1% in bribery and corruption,“ he said in a statement.
The WCY 2019 assesses economies based on four competitiveness input factors namely economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure with each encompassing five sub-factors.
Overall, Malaysia continues to be ahead of Belgium (27th), South Korea (28th) and Japan (30th).
Malaysia was overtaken by New Zealand by one spot to be ranked 7th among the 14 Asia-Pacific economies and was second only to Singapore in Asean. – Bernama
