Slovakia Drops Five Places in Global Digital Competitiveness Ranking

Bratislava, 4 November (TASR) – In the latest Digital Competitiveness Ranking by the Swiss Institute for Management Development (IMD), Slovakia fell by five places to 57th out of 69 assessed countries, with the top spots taken by Switzerland, the United States and Singapore, while the other Visegrad Group countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) ranked above Slovakia, the Institute of Freedom and Enterprise (ISP), which cooperated on the ranking, reported on Tuesday. The IMD ranking evaluates countries in three key areas – knowledge, technology and readiness for new technologies – covering nine sub-factors and using 61 specific criteria. According to ISP, Slovakia's lag in digitisation is evident even in absolute terms: it obtained 50.72 points, roughly half of Switzerland's score. This trend suggests that other economies have advanced more rapidly in key areas of digitisation. Among Slovakia's neighbours, Austria performed best, taking 24th place. The Czech Republic ranked 35th, while Poland and Hungary finished next to each other in 45th and 46th places. In absolute terms, with Switzerland achieving the maximum of 100 points, the region's countries lag behind – with scores ranging from 60 (Poland and Hungary) to nearly 80 (Austria). Slovakia achieved its best results in the legal protection of privacy (1st place) and in the student–teacher ratio in tertiary education (16th place). In the category of High-Tech Patent Grants, its 25th place indicates good capacity for creating intellectual property in advanced technological fields, said ISP. Slovakia also appeared in the top half of the ranking for smartphone ownership (26th place) and performed relatively well in total spending on research and development (38th place). Conversely, Slovakia ranked bottom for flexibility and adaptability (69th place). It also lacks foreign highly qualified personnel (68th place) and achieved the same result in the development and application of technologies. The country remained near the bottom (67th place) in immigration law and cyber-security. The ranking is determined with one-third coming from subjective assessments from a survey of company owners and managers, and two-thirds from objective statistical data. The subjective evaluations were drawn from the responses of 6,162 top managers in 69 countries. mf/df