Cyprus Slips in Global Digital Competitiveness Ranking

Cyprus Slips in Global Digital Competitiveness Ranking

Cyprus Experiences a Continued Decline in Its Global Digital Competitiveness, Ranking 51st Among 64 Countries in 2023

In 2023, Cyprus was ranked 51st out of 64 countries in terms of digital competitiveness, experiencing a drop of six places from 2022, according to a report by the University of Cyprus Economics Research Centre. The Centre and the Employers & Industrialists Federation (OEB) participated as collaborating entities in this edition published by the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

This marks the third consecutive year of decline, with the country's position worsening across all examined categories. The most significant deterioration was noted in the 'future readiness' category, with a notable regression also observed in the 'knowledge' category. Comparatively, Cyprus ranked 45th in 2022, 43rd in 2021, 40th in 2020, and 54th in 2019.

The report indicates that the 2023 ranking continued to be adversely affected by persisting issues identified in previous evaluations, which have further deteriorated. Cyprus's chronic weaknesses include criteria such as the proportion of science graduates, net inflows of foreign students, mobile broadband subscriptions, business agility, utilization of big data and analytics by enterprises, and knowledge transfer between universities and businesses.

However, Cyprus still compares favorably with other countries in certain aspects, such as the employment rate of scientific and technical personnel, the percentage of the population with tertiary education, and the proportion of women in the population with tertiary education.

Digital competitiveness rankings measure the ability and readiness of economies to adopt and develop digital technologies that lead to improvements in government operations, businesses, and society at large. The rankings are based on 54 criteria calculated from official statistics and an Opinion Survey. These criteria are grouped into three categories: knowledge (i.e., the capacity to understand and develop new technologies), technology (i.e., the capabilities for digital innovation), and future readiness (i.e., the economy's ability to utilize digital transformation).

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