Puerto Rico ranks 32nd in ’15 WEF report, slips 2 notches
Puerto Rico dropped its overall ranking, and is still faltering in several key areas.
Puerto Rico lost standing in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitive index, taking 32nd place in the 2014-2015 list, dropping two notches from last year.
Still, the results placed the island among the world’s advanced economies, a group that includes frontrunners Switzerland, Singapore, the United States, and Finland, the report released late Tuesday.
This year, Puerto Rico garnered a score of 4.64, on a scale of one to seven.
The Global Competitiveness Report’s ranking is based on the Global Competitiveness Index, which was introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2004. Defining competitiveness as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country, GCI scores are calculated by drawing together country-level data covering 12 categories — the pillars of competitiveness — that collectively make up a comprehensive picture of a country’s competitiveness.
The 12 pillars are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation, the WEF said.
When broken down by pillar, Puerto Rico excelled in the areas of the areas of intellectual property protection, accountability, strength of auditing and reporting standards, and protecting minority shareholder interests, among others.
However, Puerto Rico faltered in key areas, including the burden of government regulation, primary education enrollment, and wastefulness of government spending.
A group of local leaders in charge of providing the data to the WEF will hold a press conference today to discuss the results.
