India maintains position as top IT exporter in Global Innovation Index

11 Jul 2018 Evaluate

The Global Innovation Index (GII) rankings, published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation and GII Knowledge Partners, has ranked India at the 57th spot this year, a slight improvement from the 60th position in 2017.  India slightly improved its rank in an index of the world’s most innovative economies, maintaining its position as the top exporter of information technology (IT) services. The country is the top exporter of IT services for the second consecutive year.

India maintained its top place in the Central and Southern Asia region. However, it is noteworthy that while India is the top exporter of IT services, the use and access of information and communication technologies within the country is poor. India ranked 105th on IT access and 110th on IT use. Among lower middle-income economies, India moved up to the 5th position in the GII rankings. It has also outperformed on innovation relative to its GDP per capita for 8 years in a row. India ranks well on a number of important indicators - productivity growth and exports of information and communication technology and services.

The other areas of strength for India include the number of its science and engineering graduates, an area in which it ranked sixth overall. It ranked fourth on ease of protecting minority investors, 16th on trade, competition and market scale and within this section, third on domestic market scale measured in purchasing power parity, 18th on the global R&D companies indicator, 20th on gross capital formation and 35th overall in investment.

However, the report highlighted that India is still lagging in parameters of ease of starting a business, political stability and safety, and female employees with advanced degrees in the workforce. In some categories India ranked comparatively low displaying weakness. These are Political stability and safety (110), Regulatory quality (91), Applied tariff rate (96), Intensity of local competition (93), On the ecological sustainability indicator, India ranked at 119 and Out of 126 nations, it ranked 123rd on environmental performance.

India also did not fare well in the business environment category, ranking 106 overall and 114th in the sub-category of ease of starting a business and 91st on ease of resolving insolvency. In the education sector, the country was lagging considerably, coming in at the 112th rank and performing poorly in areas of expenditure on education as a per cent of GDP (82) and pupil-teacher ratio at the secondary level (101). Besides, in its 11th edition, the GII ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications.

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