Bangladesh jumps 14 spots in Global Innovation Index
Despite the improvement, the country stood eighth among the 10 economies in Central and Southern Asia, performing below the regional average
Bangladesh has finally moved up 14 notches to rank 102nd in the Global Innovation Index 2022, released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) yesterday, reflecting an improvement in the country's innovation capabilities.
The country had made no headway in the Global Innovation Index (GII) rating over the last four years as it was stuck in the same 116th rank among 132 countries on the index from 2018 to 2021.
According to the report, Bangladesh notably made improvements in areas like Creative Outputs, Intangible Assets, and Online Creativity, performing especially well in corporate intangible asset intensity.
Despite the improvement in the GII ranking, the country stood eighth among the 10 economies in Central and Southern Asia, performing below the regional average in all GII pillars.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Bangladesh's overall performance
The 15th edition of GII's index reveals that Bangladesh has performed better in innovation outputs than in innovation inputs, holding the 90th and the 112th positions in those categories respectively.
The Global Innovation Index is based on 80 indicators, grouped into two categories – innovation inputs and innovation outputs.
There are seven pillars of assessing innovation capabilities – institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs.
According to the GII's scores, Bangladesh's performance improved in creative output, business sophistication, human capital, and infrastructure pillars since 2021.
However, the performance in institutions, market sophistication, and knowledge and technology outputs deteriorated compared to last year.
Bangladesh's strengths and weaknesses
The report highlighted Bangladesh's strengths and weaknesses under the sub-areas of seven pillars.
In the area of knowledge impact on labour productivity growth, Bangladesh ranked fifth, while in terms of loans from microfinance institutions in the field of credit, the country's position was 11th.
In the area of GDP per unit of energy use, Bangladesh ranked 13th.
Bangladesh's performance in other areas such as gross capital formation, intangible asset intensity, and domestic market scale is also satisfactory.
Even though Bangladesh has made considerable development in a number of areas – ICT services imports, expenditure on education, environmental performance, new businesses, pupil-teacher ratio, and graduates in science and engineering have not been up to the standard.
Global performance
Switzerland has retained the top position since 2021, while the USA climbed up a spot to second and Sweden slipped a spot to third. Britain and Netherlands secured the fourth and the fifth positions respectively.
There are only two Asian countries among the top ten positions – South Korea, ranked sixth after slipping one spot compared to last year, and Singapore, ranked seventh after ascending one notch since last year.
Among the South Asian countries, India (40th) entered the top 40 for the first time. It ranked first among countries in Central and Southern Asia.
Sri Lanka (85th) and Pakistan (87th) both improved in ranking compared to last year. However, Nepal's rank remains unchanged at 111th.
"This year's GII finds that innovation is at a crossroads as we emerge from the pandemic. While innovation investments surged in 2020 and 2021, the outlook for 2022 is clouded not just by global uncertainties but continued underperformance in innovation-driven productivity" said WIPO Director General Daren Tang.
"This is why we need to pay more attention to not just investing in innovation, but how it translates into economic and social impact. Quality and value will become as critical to success as quantity and scale", he added.
