Ireland Moves Up Competitiveness Rankings in Latest Global Survey
IDA Ireland, today welcomed the news that Ireland ranks 7th of the 61 countries benchmarked in the 2016 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. This means that Ireland has moved up nine places in overall competitiveness from last year’s ranking.
Ireland achieved top ranking position in a number of important sub factors as follows:-
- 1st for Real GDP Growth
- 1st for Flexibility and adaptability of people
- 1st for Real GDP Growth per capita
- 1st for Investment Incentives
- 1st National Culture
- 1st for Finance Skills
Commenting on the results Martin Shanahan, CEO, IDA Ireland said: “International competition for investment has never been more intense – Ireland’s ranking of 7th place in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook is excellent news and will assist us greatly when making the case for Ireland in boardrooms across the world.”
“IDA Ireland has set ambitious investment and jobs targets in its current strategy ‘Winning: Foreign Direct Investment 2015-2019’. However, in order to achieve these targets, we will have to remain vigilant and monitor our competitiveness in areas like costs, property availability and talent.
“Major global companies continue to set up operations and expand in significant numbers here. Even today, Amazon announced that it is adding a further 500 highly skilled roles in Dublin due to the company’s ability to attract talent here.
“In recent years Ireland has regained valuable competitiveness, while continuing to offer a strong skills base to prospective companies looking to invest here. This has helped to deliver a very strong FDI performance by Ireland. However, there is no room for complacency. Ireland must remain conscious of maintaining improved competitiveness in an export led economy, the provision of suitable skills coming through the workforce and Ireland must continue to provide business advantages that resonate with global companies,” concluded Mr Shanahan.
About the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook:
The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) is reputed as being the worldwide reference point on the competitiveness of nations, ranking and analyzing how an economy manages the totality of its resources and competencies to increase the prosperity of its population. It has been published since 1989 and compares the competitiveness of 61 nations on the basis of over 300 criteria. It is based on hard data statistics and a business executives’ opinion survey.