Ranking Caribbean Countries on Competitiveness: Report

Above: Puerto Rico (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

What are the most competitive economies in the Caribbean?

The World Economic Forum has released its annual Global Competitiveness Report, including results for a number of Caribbean countries.

The report defines competitiveness as the “set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country,” noting that competitiveness is as much about the ability to sustain a high level of income as it is about a given country’s growth potential.

As the WEF notes, the level of productivity sets the level of prosperity that can be reached by an economy.

So which country has the most competitive economy? It’s Puerto Rico, which was ranked 32nd in the world, just behind Thailand and ahead of Chile. (Puerto Rico scored particularly strongly on health and primary education).

The highest-ranked CARICOM country was Barbados, at 55 in the world, followed by Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

The report examined 12 pillars: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency. financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.

See below for the full Caribbean data. As a reference, we’ve included rankings for some countries in the wider Caribbean basin, including Panama, Costa Rica and Venezuela.

Note: the report did not include data for several smaller-population countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Bahamas and British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean.