Last week, the Department of Information announced that Malta is improving its competitiveness according to a report released by the World Economic Forum.

In the Global Competitiveness Index 2016-2017, Malta now ranks 37^th out of 137 countries included in this publication, ahead of Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and Croatia. This represents an improvement on the 40^th place attained last year, DOI said.

This publication assesses each country on 12 main pillars. Malta excelled particularly well in the areas of higher education and training (30^th), labour market efficiency (29^th), business sophistication (31^st), and innovation (38^th).

This last item reveals one of Malta's weaknesses. Anything over 37^th means that Malta is worse in that area than the average.

Malta is ranked 38^th as regards institutions, 42^nd  as regards infrastructure, but then it is ranked as 21^st as regards macroeconomic environment and very significantly 11^th as regards health and primary education.

On the second sub-index, efficiency enhancers, Malta ranked as 30^th as regards higher education and training, 29^th for goods market efficiency and for labour market efficiency, but then an alarming 43^rd as regards financial market development and a good 22^nd as regards technological readiness.

What gets Malta's ranking down is then the 119^th ranking as regards market size.

In the third sub-index, Malta ranks 31^st for business sophistication and a bad 38^th for innovation.

What is then damning is the list of most problematic factors for doing business with, in decreasing order: inefficient government bureaucracy, insufficient capacity to innovate, inadequate supply of infrastructure, access to financing, an inadequately educated workforce, poor work ethic in national labour force, and corruption followed by other factors.

DOI pointed out that Malta's economic performance can be attributed to the reduction of public debt and deficit, and an increase in national savings. There was also a significant improvement in female participation in the labour force a result of the free childcare measures implemented by the government.

Economy Minister Chris Cardona welcomed this improvement, stating that the World Economic Forum report is among the most respected, global publications in business. The minister added that this gives the government more drive to continue carrying out positive changes and to further rise in the overall ranking gauging its competitiveness.