BY Azlan Othman

The Sultanate ranked first globally in cost of redundancy dismissal, second globally in applied tariff rate, third in political and operational stability, fourth in pupil-teacher ratio and in graduates in science and engineering.

This was revealed in the recently-published 2022 Global Innovation Index (GII). Brunei Darussalam was 47th among the 48 high-income group economies.

The Sultanate is in 38th place in global corporate R&D investors, but did not score well in domestic industry diversification, hi-tech manufacturing and infocommunications technology services exports indicators.

Brunei ranked 14th among the 17 economies in the Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania (SEAO) region.

The institutions category is where the Sultanate performed the best, at 23rd place globally.

In benchmarking against other high-income economies, Brunei Darussalam performed above the group average, while in the SEAO region, the Sultanate performed above the regional average.

Meanwhile, Brunei ranked 53rd in human capital and research and 61st in infrastructure. Its weakest performance was in knowledge and technology outputs (127th).

However, globally, Brunei Darussalam dropped 10 places in the index from 82nd to 92nd among 132 economies. The Sultanate recorded better performance in innovation inputs than innovation outputs in 2022, ranking 53rd in innovation inputs and 129th in innovation outputs. These positions are lower than in 2021 and 2020.

Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Finland and Denmark are placed in the top 10 in the index drawn up by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Meanwhile, the SEAO region continues to close the innovation performance gap with Northern America and Europe, the report added.

Seven SEAO economies are world innovation leaders: the South Korea (sixth), Singapore (seventh), China (11th), Japan (13th), Hong Kong, China (14th), New Zealand (24th) and Australia (25th).

Singapore, China and New Zealand improved their rankings this year.

Among the regional leaders, China, South Korea and Japan made the greatest advances up the rankings over the past 10 years.

The 2022 edition of the GII tracks the most recent global innovation trends against the background of an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, slowing productivity growth and other evolving challenges.

It revealed the most innovative economies in the world, ranking the innovation performance of around 132 economies while highlighting innovation strengths and weaknesses.

-- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin