The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) recently issued its 2013 report on World Competitiveness. Taiwan’s slipped down the ranks from 7th to 11th this year: its worst performance since 2009. Taiwan also dropped in all four major indices that the IMD uses to assess competitiveness: Government Efficiency (5th to 8th), Infrastructure (12th to 16th), Economic Performance (13th to 16th), and Business Efficiency (4th to 10th). However, Taiwan remains the third-most competitive economy in the Asia-Pacific region behind Hong Kong and Singapore, and ahead of Japan and South Korea.

The Minister of the Council of Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) KUAN Chung-ming argued that it was important to consider Taiwan’s progress over a longer time span, Taiwan had moved up the World Competitiveness index in the past 16 years and, in particular, since 2009. Taiwan’s economy was now largely constrained by the sluggish global economic development. The administration needed to address the issue of brain drain/loss of skilled labourers and entrepreneurs as well as tackle the slow deregulation of the financial sector. It is in CEPD’s plan to devise new talent management scheme to encourage enterprises to actively contribute to the nurturing of human resources. The purpose of the scheme is to develop sufficient supply of employable skilled technicians/professionals at middle level to address the issue of mismatch between job opportunities and unemployed youngsters, reported United Daily.