Brunei Darussalam jumped five spots from 92nd place to 87th spot among 132 economies in the latest World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Innovation Index (GII) 2023.
The Sultanate is ranked 49th among 50 high-income economies and 14th among 16 economies in Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania.
Brunei is ranked 53rd in innovation inputs, the same as last year. The nation ranks 125th in innovation outputs, which is higher than the previous year.
The Sultanate’s ranks in GII’s seven area are high in institutions (20th), infrastructure (54th), human capital and research (57th) and business sophistication (80th) while low in creative outputs (127th), knowledge and technology outputs (126th) and market sophistication (105th).
Brunei performs below the high-income group and regional averages in knowledge and technology outputs, creative outputs, business sophistication, market sophistication, human capital and research as well as infrastructure.
The Sultanate’s main innovation strengths are: cost of redundancy dismissal, applied tariff rate and operational stability for businesses.
Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore are the world’s most innovative economies while middle-income economies have emerged over the past decade as the fastest climbers of the ranking.The GII 2023 uses 80 indicators to track global innovation trends in 130-plus economies, guiding policy makers and business leaders in stimulating human ingenuity. This year, the report’s findings are unveiled against a background of slow economic recovery from the pandemic, high interest rates and conflicts.
The 2023 edition identifies an increasingly uncertain outlook for the venture capital (VC) that helps transform human ingenuity into new products and services with the global value of VC funding marking a significant plunge last year.
In the annual ranking, China – the only middle-income economy in the GII top 30 – ranks 12th followed by Japan in the 13th position. Finland (6th) is on an upward trend along with Denmark (9th), Sweden (2nd) and the Baltic economies (Estonia 16th, Lithuania 34th and Latvia 37th).
In the past 10 years, Indonesia (61st) joins China, Türkiye (39th), India (40th), Vietnam (46th), the Philippines (56th) and Iran (62nd) in the group of middle-income economies to have climbed the GII rankings fastest.
In the last four years, and since the pandemic started, Mauritius (57th), Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Pakistan have risen the most in rank. – Azlan Othman
