Cyprus has fallen to 51st place in digital competitiveness among 64 countries in 2023, marking a six-place drop compared to 2022, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Economics Research Centre (CypERC) of the University of Cyprus.
According to the report, the decline in ranking, for the third consecutive year, is attributed to worsening positions across all examined categories.
Moreover, Cyprus experienced the most significant deterioration in its position in the category of readiness for the future, while a notable decline was also recorded in the knowledge category.
Cyprus’ rankings in previous years reflect a fluctuating pattern. It held the 45th position in 2022, climbed to 43rd in 2021, reached 40th in 2020, and stood at 54th in 2019.
It was also reported that Cyprus’ ranking in 2023 continued to be affected by deficiencies in criteria highlighted in previous assessments, which have worsened further.
The report said that Cyprus’ chronic weaknesses concern criteria such as the percentage of graduates in STEM fields, net inflows of foreign students, the percentage of mobile broadband subscribers, business agility, the use of big data and analytics by businesses, and knowledge transfer between universities and businesses.
Meanwhile, in 2023, Cyprus continued to fare favourably compared to other countries in aspects such as the employment rate of scientific and technical workers, the percentage of the population with tertiary education, and the percentage of women in the population with tertiary education.
It should be noted that the CypERC and the Cyprus Employers and Industrialists Federation (Οev) contributed as collaborating entities to the publication by the World Competitiveness Centre of the IMD Business School.
The digital competitiveness ranking measures the ability and readiness of economies to adopt and develop digital technologies leading to improvements in the functioning of the state apparatus, businesses, and society at large.
The ranking is based on 54 criteria calculated from official statistics and data collected from an opinion survey.
The criteria are grouped into three categories. These include knowledge, meaning the ability to understand and develop new technologies; technology, which refers to the country’s capabilities for digital innovation; and readiness for the future, which reflects the economy’s ability to harness digital transformation.
