Video conference with Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist, IMD World Competitiveness Center

Recently, Australia scored its worst result in 25 years in a global ranking of competitiveness, even as it was one of few countries to successfully manage the twin health and economic crisis unleashed by the pandemic.

Australia fell four places to 22nd in the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) World Competitiveness Yearbook, which compares the performance of 64 nations. The result puts Australia in sixth place out of the 14 countries of the Asia-Pacific that were included in the survey.

“The way executives see the economy, they are not convinced it will work out.” said Christos Cabolis Chief Economist, IMD Competitiveness Centre.

“Australia’s tax regime is called out in the survey as a drag on competitiveness, with Australia ranking 54th and 57th respectively for its corporate and personal income tax burdens,” he said.

The Swiss-based IMD is not the first organisation to single out Australia for its narrow economic base, whereby minerals and energy comprise 70 per cent of all exports.

Christos said “that Australia’s business community had “major doubts” about the economy as well as deteriorating attitudes towards globalisation, exacerbated by the pandemic.”

Australia’s strongest attributes, according to Christos were its health and environment, business legislation and international investment.

Australia’s successful economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic also helped its economic performance ranking climb.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, held a zoom session, direct from Athens in Greece, with the IMD World Competitiveness Center’s Chief Economist, Christos Cabolis, regarding the recently released IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook for 2021.

The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) is the leading annual report on the competitiveness of countries and has been published by IMD since 1989. It benchmarks the performance of 64 economies based on more than 330 criteria measuring different facets of competitiveness. See more here.