The Alpine Nation, which bagged top place in 2021, was ousted by Denmark and Ireland in the 2023 rankings. Denmark retained its leading position from 2022 while Ireland made a leap from 11th to second in the space of a year, thanks to huge GDP growth.
As in previous editions, Switzerland was still top of the pile when it came to the efficiency of government and technical infrastructure. It also moved from 30th to 18th on an “economic performance” indicator, but dropped three places on “company efficiency”.
IMD professor Arturo Bris told Le Temps newspaper that while Switzerland remains very attractive for businesses, it “needs to move faster” on digitalisation in order to keep up.
He also told the newspaper that Ireland’s sudden jump was likely to be temporary.
The top 10 included five smallish European economies, whereas economic giants like the US and China fared slightly worse. Bris said that “the ability of a country to generate wealth for its population is a key factor of success. This is not yet the case in China, and it’s also not what the US is doing right now”.
Countries particularly affected by high inflation over the past year, such as many Eastern European economies, lost ground on competitiveness, the report said.
The study ranked 64 countries according to 164 indicators. It was also based on feedback from the economic, political and scientific sectors, and survey responses from 6,400 company executives.
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