Denmark reached the top spot (from 3rd) for the first time in the history of the IMD World Competitiveness Rankings.
Over the years, Denmark has improved from its lowest position of 15th in 2001, to 13th in 2010, to 6th in 2016, and to 2nd in 2020.
In that ranking, Switzerland dropped to 2nd (from 1st), Singapore regained 3rd place (from 5th), Sweden dropped to 4th (from 2nd), and Hong Kong moved up to 5th (from 7th).
Above all, Denmark’s achievement is due to gains in the international investment subfactor and a strong performance in the government efficiency factor (6th), particularly in the institutional framework (2nd), business legislation (3rd), and institutional framework (3rd) social framework (2nd).
Denmark
The country stood out in the Business Efficiency factor (1st) and subfactors such as Productivity and Efficiency (1st) and Management Practices (1st); and also improved in Attitudes and Values (6th to 3rd).
In addition, Denmark reached 2nd place in the Infrastructure factor advancing in the Technological Infrastructure (6th to 3rd) and Scientific Infrastructure (11th to 10th) subfactors, but lost one place in Education (4th).
On the other hand, Switzerland’s performance remained strong despite its slight drop in the overall ranking.
It topped the Government Efficiency and Infrastructure factors and ranked fourth in Business Efficiency.
Switzerland’s drop in the overall ranking is largely due to a sharp drop in the International Investment sub-factor and, to a lesser extent, in the Employment sub-factor, which places the country in 30th place in the Economic Performance factor.
However, Switzerland improved in International Trade (from 15th to 12th). In Government Efficiency, it had slight drops in Public Finance (from 1 to 3) and Social Framework (from 5 to 6), but remains in 1st place in the Institutional Framework subfactor.
The improvement in the Business Efficiency factor (5th to 4th) is largely due to gains in Productivity and Efficiency (4th to 2nd) and Labor Market (6th to 5th).
However, it is worth noting that the country’s performance on the Attitudes and Values subfactor remains moderately low at 14th.
