THAILAND has climbed two notches in the rankings of the closely watched Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 (GIC 4.0) to 38th place.

The country improved its score from 66.3 in 2017 to 67.5 out of 100 in the report that is put out by the World Economic Forum (WEF), according to the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy at Chulalongkorn University. The faculty is an official partner of WEF.

The report, released yesterday, covered 140 countries and territories. The result has been taken to show that Thailand is steadily moving towards to the objectives of the 4.0 economy.

The WEF changed the criteria and methods of calculating the GCI rankings in order to reflect the so-called fourth industrial revolution.

Under the study, the 10 most competitive economies were listed as the United States, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark. Associate Professor Dr Pasu Decharin, dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, said the faculty had been responsible for collecting in-depth information from a questionnaire answered by top executives in large and small organisations across all industrial sectors.

According to the criteria of WEF, the global competitiveness of a country or territory was calculated from 98 indices categorised into 12 pillars to reflect its overall competitiveness.Regarding the new criteria and methods of calculating GCI, which were designed to reflect the fourth industrial evolution, Thailand moved up two places from 40th position last year.

For comparisons with the previous year, WEF also employed the new criteria and methods of GCI 4.0 to analyse the data of 2017. Under this framework, Thailand was awarded the score of 66.3 in 2017. The results confirmed that, with the new criteria and methods of calculating GCI 4.0, the country is increasingly advancing towards the goals of the Thailand 4.0 era.

 

source : THE NATION