Malaysia fell seven places to 34th out of 67 countries in the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Ranking released yesterday. It also dropped four places to 10th out of 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the first time it has ranked lower than Indonesia and Thailand.

Muhyiddin noted that the IMD report said Malaysia’s competitiveness showed a significant drop in sub-sectors such as domestic economy, productivity and efficiency.

“Among countries with a gross domestic product per capita of less than US$20,000, Malaysia’s score of 68.13 points puts it behind Thailand (72.51) and Indonesia (71.52),” said the former prime minister in a Facebook post.

“For the first time in history, Malaysia has fallen behind Indonesia and Thailand in the world competitiveness ranking. This is a bitter pill to swallow because Malaysia was once dubbed the Tiger of Asia with a strong and competitive economy.

“This points to something deeply wrong in the management of the country’s economy, which will have a long-term negative impact on Malaysia’s economic competitiveness and the prosperity of its people.

“It is time for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to acknowledge the reality that Malaysia’s economy has not improved under his leadership.”

The IMD report listed five challenges for Malaysia, namely increasing investment in research and development to boost business resilience, optimising the labour market to maximise workforce productivity, updating policies and regulations to improve global competitiveness, leveraging advanced technologies to accelerate productivity growth, and mitigating increasing costs through strategic productivity enhancements.

The IMD World Competitiveness Ranking analyses and ranks the capacity of countries to create and maintain an environment that sustains the competitiveness of enterprises.

The current edition ranks 67 economies worldwide, with each economy’s final score calculated using a combination of executive perceptions and statistical data.