Results 2011

Iceland's Competitiveness Remains the Same
According to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2011, Hong Kong and USA are tied in first place. Iceland is ranked number 31 over the world's most competitive economies and declines by one place from last year. Iceland's problems are still significant. The economic recovery has been weak, which shows in the results. Iceland's economic performance is particularly weak, but Iceland is at the bottom of the 60 participating countries in that area. The figure below shows that little improvements have been made compared to other countries.

^{Countries are ranked on a scale where 1 is the first place and 59 is the bottom place.}

An appropriate company?
Table 1 below shows some of Iceland's neighbouring countries on the competitiveness ranking. Some of the countries are somewhat less developed than Iceland and offer a significantly lower standard of living, including Thailand, India, Estonia, Poland and Kazakhstan. However, there are also countries with a similar rank which are developed but are suffering from the consequences of the financial crisis of 2008.

Tafla 1 - Selected countries' competitiveness rankings
en_table1 ^{Countries are ranked on a scale where 1 is the first place and 59 is the bottom place.}

Infrastructure remains strong despite a deep recession
The financial crisis, which hit Iceland harder than most countries, caused a collapse in three of the four main factors of competitiveness, economic performance, business efficiency and public efficiency. However, the fourth factor, infrastructure, still remains intact and among the highest of participating nations. This includes health care, education and basic infrastructure such as access to water, education, roads and electricity. This strong infrastructure should help Iceland in increasing it's competitiveness again much sooner than otherwise.

^{Countries are ranked on a scale where 1 is the first place and 59 is the bottom place.}

The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook is based on over 300 indicators as well as an executive survey. 59 participants are evaluated in the survey this year and all of them are western or developed economies.

Further information