Competition is wide-spread in the world. Individuals compete. Businesses compete. And countries compete. Many studies have shown that competition drives excellence.
Economists view competition as an effective instrument for fair trade. Without competition, business can become monopolistic, which leads to injustice.
The rise of cartels is another sign that there is unhealthy competition.
In Malaysia, people attribute high food prices to the presence of cartels.
Many countries create watchdogs to guard against unfair competition.
They monitor and evaluate business merger attempts to make sure competition is maintained.
We have our own competition commission as a watchdog.
At the international level, the World Trade Organisation was created to promote fair and healthy competition.
Malaysia's 34th position in the 2024 World Competitiveness Ranking is its poorest performance in years.
This was the subject of a recent discourse aimed at looking for solutions. Many of our economists were there to reason out and offer ideas. Singapore regained its top ranking, Thailand and Indonesia overtook us.
The meeting was told that the drop from 27th position in 2023 was due to a decline in business and government efficiency.
Thailand was ranked 25th in 2024, and Indonesia, 27th.
The ranking by Switzerland-based International Institute for Management Development comprises four factors: business efficiency, government efficiency, economic performance and infrastructure.
There were 67 countries in the ranking.
Malaysia's worst performance was for business efficiency: it ranked 40th compared with 32nd in 2023.
In particular, within the sub-factor of productivity and efficiency, Malaysia fell 17 spots to 53rd, and the management practice sub-factor declined 11 places to 42nd.
Notably, Malaysia suffered a decline in all five sub-factors in business and government efficiency.
In the government efficiency factor, the business legislation sub-factor fell five places to 50th, societal framework fell three places to 42nd and public finance dropped two spots to 35th.
The report listed five challenges for Malaysia:
INCREASING investment in research and development (R&D) to boost business resilience;
OPTIMISING the labour market to maximise workforce productivity;
UPDATING policies and regulations to improve global competitiveness;
LEVERAGING advanced technologies to boost productivity growth; and,
MITIGATING increasing costs through strategic productivity enhancements.
The top five positions in the ranking went to Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland and Hong Kong.
We were at 10th spot in 2010.
There is no reason why we cannot rise with the right strategies. We need to because this ranking has implications on investments, especially foreign direct investments.
I would single out strengthening our talent pool, especially in the technological space, as a key strategy.
This is where investment in research and development can make a difference. We are low on industry-academia collaboration in R&D.
We need to put in place a governance structure to invigorate industry-academia R&D partnership.
A factor that may have contributed to our 10th position in 2010 was that very governance structure.
A Performance Management and Delivery Unit, created to further our economic transformation agenda, did an excellent job to bring industry and academia closer.
We need to revisit our technology development strategy, but even more crucial is the technology for sustainability.
Competitiveness rankings should not be taken lightly.
This is becoming more urgent as interest in higher education is waning. We need to arrest this.
* The writer is a professor at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy, UCSI University