India is unapologetically baring its fangs, moves up 16 places to the 55th spot on global competitiveness index

India has improved a lot in competitiveness of the country’s institutions and macroeconomic environment and it is showing. Among emerging economies, India has ended five years of decline.

India moved up 16 positions to rank 55th on a global index of the world's most competitive economies. The list was topped by Switzerland.

This is an indication that India has improved slightly in infrastructure, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said in its latest Global Competitiveness Report.

The top five countries that featured in the report were Switzerland, Singapore, the US, Germany and the Netherlands.
Nations like Japan, Hong Kong, Finland, Sweden and the UK were in top ten.

According to WEF, the most problematic factors for doing business in India include corruption, policy instability, inflation and access to finance.

However, India ranked better in areas like investor protection, gross national savings, quality of education system, venture capital availability, hiring and firing practices, GDP and domestic market size, public trust in politicians and burden of government regulation.
Meanwhile, China was at 28^th spot.

In terms of competitiveness of its institutions, India is ranked 60th (out of total 140 countries and up 10 positions from last year), while for infrastructure it has gained six places to 81st.

For macroeconomic environment, India is ranked 91st, helped by a reduction in commodity prices and improvement in the government's budget deficit.

Geneva-based think-tank, WEF, said its survey of top executives also finds corruption followed by political instability and inflation, as the most problematic factor to doing business in the country.

The study, released today, assesses 140 countries on the basis of factors driving their productivity and prosperity.

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