Czech Republic climbs competitiveness rankings in IMD survey

One of the top business schools in the world, Switzerland’s IMD, has recently completed its annual competitiveness rankings of countries around the world. And the good news for the Czech Republic is that it has once again improved its performance and climbed up the rankings of the respected survey.

Photo: archive of Czech Government

This year’s report by IMD puts the Czech Republic in 27th place on its world rankings, that’s a jump of two places compared with the ranking in the previous year. The Czech Republic finds itself sandwiched in the table between Japan and Thailand and ahead of South Korea, France, and all of the countries in Central Europe. At the top of the table are Hong Kong, Switzerland, the United States of America, and Singapore.

Dr. Christos Cabolis is chief economist at the IMD World Competitiveness Center. He underlined the fact that the Czech Republic’s position has been improving for some time now.

“The first thing that we can say is that these additional two points, two positions, that the Czech Republic moved up is a trend that started in 2013. From 2013 onwards we see the Czech Republic improving year after year. And I think that if one sees the data, the two areas for this year that were very important were international trade, which keeps being a very good component for economic performance, and international investment.”

Christos Cabolis, photo: archive of IMD

The Czech Republic in particular has been a gainer from low oil and basic energy prices with the strong export performance underpinned by the central bank’s policy of keeping the Czech crown low against the euro. But, Dr. Cabolis sees other domestic factors also at work in the improvement.

“I think that the focus on government efficiency and business efficiency, the focus on creating an environment which is business friendly, and also the focus on infrastructure is starting to pay off.”

That, he says, is something that appears to be happening across Central Europe. Some countries in the wider region, such as Slovakia and Slovenia, jumped six places in the table though are still placed behind the Czech Republic.

And while Dr. Cabolis does not pretend that he has any economic crystal ball, he is upbeat that the improving Czech performance should be able to continue into the following years when asked about the future.

Photo: European Commission

“We cannot answer this question with the data that we have, but what we can see is that the Czech Republic has invested in the past in areas like education. Education has had quite an improvement this year. And, of course, when we are speaking about education we are talking about the future strengthening of the talent of the country. If one checks what people who were surveyed, that is mid-level and high level managers in the country, the key attractiveness indicators that they pointed out were related to education. It was related to the skilled workforce, it was related to the high educational level and also to the effective labour relations. These things are very promising for the future.”