PHL drops to almost the bottom of the global talent index

By means of Justine Irish D. Table, Reporter

THE PHILIPPINES collapsed This is evident from a report by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center. This is evident from a report by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center.

In the IMD’s World Talent Ranking (WTR) 2024, the Philippines has fallen three places to 63^rd from 67 countries, from 60^e of the 64 economies last year. This is the country’s worst ranking since 2005.

The Philippines’ talent competitiveness lagged behind Asia-PaciFic neighbors. It ranked 13th^e of the 14 Asia-PaciFIC countries, only better than Mongolia.

Singapore was the highest ranked economy in the Asia PaciFic, like it Ffinished second overall. It was followed by Hong Kong (9^e), Australia (14^e), Taiwan (18^e), South Korea (26^e), Malaysia (33^rd), China (38^e), New Zealand (39^e), Japan (43^rd), Indonesia (46^e) and Thailand (47^e), and India (58^e).

The talent index was again dominated by the European economies, led by Switzerland (1^st general), Luxembourg (3^rd), Sweden (4^e) and Denmark (5^e).

The WTR rankings are based on three factors: ‘attractiveness’, or the extent to which an economy attracts foreign talent and retains local talent; ‘investment and development’, which refers to measuring the resources allocated to develop a homegrown workforce; and “readiness,” or the quality of skills in a country’s talent pool.

José Caballero, a senior economist at the IMD World Competitiveness Center, said in an email interview that the decline in the Philippines’ talent rankings was due to the decline in investment, development and readiness factors.

“At indicator level, the most important aspect is aFInvestment and development performance is affected by the inadequate implementation of apprenticeship programs and the limited priority given by the private sector to worker training,” he said.

The Philippines had the lowest ranking in investment and development, falling to 64^e this year of 62^i.e last year. This was due to a significant drop in the rankings for apprenticeships and employee training.

The Philippines is also among the lowest in terms of government expenditure on education per student (63^rd) and student-teacher ratio for primary education (60^e) and secondary (63^rd) education.

In terms of readiness factor, the country has fallen to 52nd place^i.e place.

“In terms of preparedness, there has been an overall decline in all measures of the impact of the country’s talent developmentFfortresses,” Mr. Caballero said. “There is also a decrease in the priority that companies give to attracting and retaining talent (57^e) and employee motivation (47^e), which contribute to brain drain (54^e). The latter is one of the most important drivers for talent readiness.”

The low scores of 15-year-old Filipino students in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one of the Philippines’ biggest weaknesses. According to the PISA 2022, Philippine students were among the weakest in the world in mathematics, reading and science. The Philippines ranks 77th^e from 81 countries and performed worse than the global average in all categories.

Mr Caballero said the country’s low investment in education and the quality of the system is fundamental to understanding why the country lags behind its regional counterparts.

On appeal, the Philippines moved up a step to 54^e because it performed well in terms of cost of living (20^e) and personal income tax collected (20^e). However, it scored low in terms of quality of life (57^e).

“The attractiveness of the Philippines also plays a role. Although the cost of living is relatively high, the quality of life is lacking, as well as the performance in terms of institutional strength, which are crucial for attracting highly qualified talent,” Mr. Caballero added.

To improve this, he said the country needs to review its overall talent development strategy, which will help streamline its investments in the education sector.

“This should be a carefully considered strategy, not a matter of just increasing expenditures, but one that aligns investments with the system’s outcome, that is, the skills and competencies the Philippine economy needs to perform efficiently,” he added.

Jose Enrique “Sonny” A. Africa, executive director of the IBON Foundation think tank, said the country lags in talent competitiveness because it fails to prioritize education and public health.

“Asia-Pacific countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have fared better because they have focused on building comprehensive education systems, investing in public health and varying levels of national industrial policies” , said Mr Africa. via Viber.

“In contrast, the Philippines continues to struggle with reckless liberalization, underfunded institutions and short-sighted economic strategies,” he added.

Mr Africa said the government can make immediate gains by investing more in education, health and social protection, which will create a more capable and productive workforce.

“The government can build more and better public education infrastructure, ensure universal access to quality education and improve vocational and technical training,” he said.

Meanwhile, Benjamin B. Velasco, an assistant professor at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations of the University of the Philippines Diliman, said it is not surprising that the country scores very low on the talent index.

“Many of the talent indicators depend on education, for example the PISA rankings program, student-teacher ratios and the budget for education,” Mr Velasco said in a Viber message.

“We are not doing well in this objective set of indicators. Our education system is in crisis,” he added.

To improve its education system, Mr. Velasco said the country will have to increase the budget for public education, improve wages to attract talent to the teaching profession, and provide books, gadgets and classrooms.

“The private sector should pay more, not less, taxes to increase government revenues. These are hardly original ideas. Many have said this before. It is not the case that our audience officials have no talent. But they lack the will to just do it. They seem busy with their game of thrones,” he added.

Jamil Paolo S. Francisco, executive director of the Asian Institute of Management Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness, said the Philippines lags behind its peers due to low government spending on education as a percentage of gross domestic product and per student. level.

“Our relatively weaker investment in human capital development has negative consequences for the future readiness of our workforce. Complicating this challenge is the fact that we continue to lose globally competitive talent to ‘more attractive’ countries,” Francisco said in an email interview.

“This is disappointing because while one of the few positives cited by poll respondents remains the availability of skilled labor in the Philippines,ffSmart investments in education and workforce development undermine the readiness of our future workforce and thus the productivity and overall competitiveness of our economy going forward,” he added.

Looking ahead, Mr. Francisco said the country needed to signFsignificantly improve the quality of education to see better results.

“The future workforce will need to learn to work with advanced digital technologies to remain competitive,” he said.

As a largely service-driven and labor-rich economy, we must invest in equipping our current workforce and preparing our future workforce for this type of human-machine collaboration to capture much-needed potential productivity gains,” he says. added.