Out of 125 countries, the Philippines slipped from 54th place to 58th place in terms of talent competitiveness, a survey revealed.
According to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) for 2019, which seeks to identify a country’s ability to enable, attract, grow, and retain skilled workers, the Philippines got a score of 40.94 out of 100, a slight dip from the country’s score of 44.17 in 2018, reported Business World.
The index also checks the number of mid-level and highly-skilled workers in the country.
Michael L. Ricafort, economist at the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp, said that the slip in the country’s competitiveness could be attributed to the high number of highly-skilled Filipinos leaving the country and opting to work abroad for better career and financial opportunities. This phenomenon is also known as “brain drain”.
“The slight decline of the Philippines’ ranking in the GTCI Index may partly have to do with some local talent being exported to more developed countries due to higher pay and better employment opportunities,” Ricafort said.
“Some highly-skilled workforce are being attracted as immigrants in some developed countries, some of which have aging populations and facing some shortage of workers. This reflects the fact that the Philippines is the third biggest country in terms of inward remittances from overseas workers after India and China,” he added.
Despite the slip, the Philippines’ ranking remained to be the best performing country among lower-middle-income economies, fourth among Southeast Asian countries, and ninth in Eastern, Southeastern Asia and Oceania group.
“The Philippines has a good pool of Global Knowledge Skills (34th), scoring quite well in both High-Level Skills (37th) and Talent Impact (30th). It is also relatively adept in growing talent (41st), where its strengths in Lifelong Learning (27th) and Access to Growth Opportunities (42nd) offset a sub-standard Formal Education (85th),” said the report, which nevertheless noted that “[m]ore discouragingly, the country’s weak Sustainability (88th) and Lifestyle (91st) subpillars result in a low ability to Retain (92nd) talent,” the index reported.
