Asia needs to do more to increase its digital competitiveness, says experts

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The IMD World Competitiveness Center recently released its world digital competitiveness rankings. While many have been talking about Singapore’s drop from the number one spot, what may be interesting as well is that the city-state is the only Asian country that made the top 10.

While Thailand, Korea, and Japan made headway in the ranks from 2017, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines slipped. Notably, the Philippines slipped 10 points from 2017’s rankings and Indonesia dropped three ranks, becoming 62nd out of 63 countries.

With these results, we asked two experts on how the Asia Pacific region could bolster their digital competitiveness.

Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for clarity.

Christos Cabolis, chief economist and head of operations at the IMD World Competitiveness Center

The IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking assesses the capacity and readiness of a country to adopt and explore digital technologies that are transforming government practices, business models, and society in general.

The Asia Pacific region’s performance is robust:

• Singapore – second
• Hong Kong – 11th
• Australia – 13th
• Korea – 14th
• Taiwan – 16th

The region is strong in factors such as knowledge and technology. Singapore, for instance, ranks highest in both factors, while Hong Kong and Korea are in top 20.

But what calls for improvement is future readiness (an economy’s level of preparedness to assume digital transformation). Here, Singapore ranks 15th and Hong Kong 24th, while the other economies range from 11th to the 62nd place.

Let’s discuss