The Philippines fell two places in the world digital competitiveness ranking this year, according to Institute for Management Development (IMD). 

In its IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2020, the  Philippines ranked 57th out of 63 economies in the world, two notches lower compared to its 2019 ranking of 55th.

“The decline reflects the weakening of the talent and training and education sub-factors,” IMD said. 

“The deterioration of these sub-factors is mainly driven by decreases in the availability of internationally,” it added. 

The world’s digital ranking, measures the capacity and readiness of 63 nations to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government and wider society. 

The better a country performs in the rankings, the more competitive are its use of digital technologies. 

The rankings are based on three main factors — knowledge, which measures the know-how necessary to discover, understand, and build new technologies; technology, which measures the overall context that enables the development of digital technologies and future readiness, which measures the level of country preparedness to exploit digital transformation, broken down to adaptive attitudes to new technology, business agility, and IT integration. 

The Philippines was behind Indonesia, which ranked 56th; Thailand, 39th and  Malaysia, 26th.  

The top 10 countries were USA, Singapore, Denmark, Sweden, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Netherlands, Korea, Norway and Finland. 

This year’s results have been coloured by COVID-19 causing a sudden and near universal dependence on digital technology.

“The flexibility and adaptability of both individuals and the private sector may also be a large part of the puzzle for countries trying to rebuild their economies from COVID’s battering,” Christos Cabolis, chief economist of the IMD World Competitiveness Center said.

Technology not only affects how businesses perform but also how countries function and prepare for the future. National governments around the world are investing heavily in their digital economy to enhance value creation and prosperity.   

“The post-COVID world will be characterized by a K-shaped recovery, with two types of economies: those that will recover quickly and those that will recover more slowly,” Arturo Bris, director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center said.

“Recovery is driven by many factors, such as the health of public finances. But also, fundamentally, by the digital competitiveness of those economies,”Bris added.