Israel maintained its 19th place ranking in the 2013 IMD World Competitiveness ranking, released on Thursday.Israel scored its highest points in technical and scientific infrastructure, but was held back by low scores for productivity and efficiency, prices and basic infrastructure.The country’s highest “key attractiveness indicators” included a skilled workforce, strong culture of research and development, high education level and a dynamic economy.Since 1997, Israel was among the countries whose rankings increased the most, alongside China, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. In 1997, it was ranked 25th.Uriel Lynn, president of the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, said the improvement was a “tremendous achievement for the economy in the last 10 years,” but noted that integrating excluded populations into the labor force and regulation destructive to the business sector remained problematic.The United States, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Sweden topped the 2013 ranking, while Bulgaria, Croatia, Argentina and Venezuela rounded out the bottom of the 60 countries included in the ranking.
