RP maintains global IT competitiveness ranking

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines retained its ranking in this year’s global competitiveness index in information technology (IT) sponsored by an international business software group. However, it scored poorly in one of the major categories—research and development (R&D)—prompting the Business Software Alliance to recommend that the Philippines take decisive action to stay competitive. In the second annual BSA IT benchmarking study, the Philippines retained its rank of 47 as last year. But two countries were included in this year’s index—Bangladesh and Croatia, bringing the total number of countries to 66. A BSA official warned that the Philippines cannot sustain this ranking in the long-term because of its poor performance in the R&D index. The Philippines still bested Asian countries with which it is competing in IT services. India, considered as number one worldwide in IT services, ranked 48 while China, which is producing a huge share of the IT output worldwide, ranked 50. The study was conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) using quantitative and qualitative data, and completed by July, said BSA vice-president and Asia Pacific regional director Jeffrey Hardee, in a press briefing in Makati City on Thursday. The study, contained in a report titled How Technology Sectors Grow: Benchmarking IT industry competitiveness 2008, was conducted to provide governments and policy makers with a road map of where they want to go given their countries' strengths and weaknesses, explained Hardee. The Philippines scored 29.8 against India's score of 28.9 and China's score of 27.6. But the scores of these three Asian countries pale in comparison to the leaders in the list. The United States, which held on to its number one spot for the second year, scored 74.6 while Taiwan, which ranked two from six the previous year, scored 69.2. The countries were evaluated based on six categories with different weights. The categories with their respective weights are the following: overall business environment, 10 percent; IT infrastructure, 20 percent; human capital, 20 percent; legal environment, 10 percent; R&D environment, 25 percent; and support for IT industry development, 15 percent. The Philippines ranked in the middle to lower middle of all six categories except for R&D where the Philippines ranked 62 out of 66 countries. - Veronica C. Silva, GMANews.TV