Global competitiveness report: Philippines ranks 56th!

157SHARES1111

By: Louella Desiderio (The Philippine Star) 

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines ranked 56th out of 140 countries in the latest Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum.

WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index 2018 released by partner institute Makati Business Club (MBC) to the media yesterday showed the Philippines as the fifth most competitive economy in Southeast Asia.

Within the region, the Philippines was behind neighbors Singapore (second), Malaysia (25th), Thailand (38th) and Indonesia (45th), but ahead of Brunei Darussalam (62nd), Vietnam (77th), Cambodia (110th) and Lao People’s Democratic Republic (112th).

The US topped this year’s WEF Global Competitiveness Report. Singapore was in second place, with Germany in third spot. Chad, meanwhile, was the bottom-dweller, at 140th spot. 

For the rankings, the report looked at 12 pillars: institutions, infrastructure, information and communication technology adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, education and skills, product market, labor market, financial system, market size, business dynamism and innovation capability.

Of the 12 pillars, the Philippines was strong in market size (32nd), labor market (36th), financial system (39th) and business dynamism (39th).

Business dynamism includes the time to start a business as well as the cost of starting a business and insolvency rates.

“While the time and cost of starting a business remain as problematic factors for the business community, it is worthy to note that the Philippines ranks high in e-participation or the use of online platforms to link government information to citizens,” MBC chairman Edgar Chua said.

“With the recently passed Ease of Doing Business Act, we remain optimistic that the government will be able to sustain these gains and address the concerns of efficiency in doing business,” he added.

Republic Act 11032 or the Ease of Doing Business Act, which was signed into law by President Duterte in May, provides a required number of days for processing government transactions to address bureaucratic red tape.

Meanwhile, the country was weak in institutions (101st), health (101st) and infrastructure (92nd).

Under the institutions pillar, critical indicators where the Philippines ranked poorly include terrorism incidence, homicide rate, organized crime and reliability of police services.

In infrastructure, the Philippines had low rankings in road connectivity, exposure to unsafe drinking water, efficiency of train services and electrification rate.

“While we continuously build on our strong pillars, it is equally important to address our weak spots. The business community remains committed to work with the government to address these gaps, especially in our weakest links in ease of doing business, corruption incidence and infrastructure, particularly in road connectivity,” Chua said.

As the WEF transitioned to a new index for this year’s report, the rankings are not comparable with previous reports.

This year’s report focused on what a country should prioritize, whether a country is making progress over time and what a country can learn from high-performers.

More (global) cyber attacks

WED, MAY 17, 2017 BY THE MINDANAO DAILY MIRROR LEAVE A COMMENT

IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring

Several weeks ago, I mentioned in this corner that the German government plans cyber attack ‘hackback’ ahead of national elections in September. Indeed, there are many cyber attack fears ahead of it. How much more now!

Latest example: several British NHS (National Health Sysyem) divisions reported problems with their computer systems on Friday afternoon local time (May 12, 2017)  –  while hospitals in London, northwest England and other parts of the country alerted patients to the temporary closures.

“We are aware of a major IT secure system attack. All IT systems have been tem-porarily shut down,” Derby-shire Community Health Services said on Twitter. NHS Merseyside in the north of England reassured its patients via Twitter that it was working to solve the problem. Sure!

The NHS later confirmed several hospitals’ computer systems had been hit by the Wanna Decryptor ransom-ware variant, but that patient data had not been accessed. “This attack was not speci-fically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors,” NHS Digital, a division of NHS England that handles information technology issues, said in a statement.

Ransom-ware attacks  are becoming more more frequent. British hospitals have been hit by ransom-ware attacks before, with hackers typically encrypting files and demanding a bitcoin bounty to unlock the files. The malware typically spreads through networks.

In 2016 an NHS division canceled operations and diverted major trauma cases when it was hit by a virus.

Intel Security reported in 2016 that hospitals were increasingly being targeted by ransom-ware operations, with one operator earning almost US$121 million (111 million Euro).”A combination of legacy systems with weak security, a lack of employee security awareness, a fragmented workforce, and the pressing need for immediate access to information has led the criminal underground to prey on hospitals,” the report said.

In 2016 British leaders unveiled a multibillion-pound national cybersecurity strategy that included new police units to target organized online gangs and even retaliation for major attacks.

Already 2016, hackers hold German hospital data hostage. Several hospitals in Germany have come under attack by ransom-ware, a type of virus that locks files and demands cash to free data it maliciously encrypted. Ac-cording to present know-ledge, it was an attachment in an email that allowed the virus to enter the system. It will take weeks until all systems are up and running again. First thing, one might notice the system isn’t running smoothly anymore. Error messages are popping up, and the system is suspiciously slow.

Hospitals have fallen victim to ransom-ware – a type of malware that makes data inaccessible to its rightful owner. Hackers then demand ransom payments in ex-change for a key that unlocks the files.

Ransom payments happened also in Hollywood. Blackmailing hospitals into paying ransom has also been reported in other parts of the world, most notably in the US state of California where a Hollywood hospital paid about $17,000 (15,000 EURO) in the digital currency bitcoins to hackers this month.

Import is to have regular backups.  If the virus encrypted data is being backed up, one just restore the backup files. Fact is, each one of us and our surroundings are being watched by Big Brother…. A world of glass!