The New Nation - Internet Edition

BUSINESS REPORT

Bangladesh lags behind 66 other countries in industrial competitiveness, faring poorer than Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan, a United Nations Industrial Development Organisation report said.

In an industrial development scoreboard prepared by the UNIDO, Bangladesh ranks 67, out of 100 different economies in terms of competitiveness of its industry in a liberalising world.

Singapore tops the UNIDO list and is followed by Ireland, Switzerland, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Korea, Taiwan Province of China, France, the US, Hong Kong, Austria, Slovenia in the top 15.

However, Bangladesh fared better than Sri Lanka, which occupies the 75th position.

Others in the ranking are UK (16), the Netherlands (17), Malaysia (18), Canada (22), Malta (23), China (26), Mexico (30), Brazil (39) and Russia (66).

"The scoreboard is based on two sets of components, namely industrial development indicators and competitive industrial performance index, the latter benchmarking competitive industrial activity of countries against the backdrop of liberalisation and globalisation," UNIDO said.

The index measures the competitive performance of countries in terms of their ability to produce goods competitively, keeping abreast with changing technologies as well as the intensity of industrialisation, which is the share of manufacturing value added in GDP.

It also takes into account export quality, reflecting the role of manufacturing in a country's export activity as well as the ability to make more advanced products, thereby moving into more dynamic areas of export growth, UNIDO said.

Industrialised countries continue to lead the rankings, while transition economies are tightly grouped in the middle ranks.