Portugal retains 26th place in world competitiveness ranking

Portugal remained in 26th place in the ‘ranking’ of the IMD World Talent Competitiveness Centre 2021, staying out of the front line of the most competitive economies regarding the development, attraction and retention of talent, it was released on Thursday.

According to the results released by the Institute of Management Development (IMD), “Portugal maintains the 26th position, after two consecutive years in which it lost places”.

Although Portugal has risen three places in the “attractiveness” factor (from 33rd to 30th), it is in this segment that the country’s competitiveness is lowest, concluded the IMD analysis.

However, it was in the “investment and development of talent” factor that Portugal lost the most ground, moving from 22nd to 25th, once again due to “companies’ lack of investment in ‘Employee Training’ (60th position)”.

“After achieving its best result in 2018, with the 17th place, in recent years Portugal has lost ground with regard to focus on Talent, and in 2021 it was again unable to reverse this negative trend,” says, in a statement, Porto Business School, which is the exclusive partner of IMD Digital Competitiveness Ranking for the collection of data on Portugal, since 2015.

On a positive note, Portugal stood out for the strong percentage it has at the level of the female workforce (49.5%), in relation to its total workforce, as well as for the good score of the quality of management training (“management education”) and the level of language skills.

Portugal was thus far behind countries like Switzerland, Sweden and Luxembourg, which ranked first among the 64 economies analysed as the most competitive economies in terms of global talent.

Switzerland kept first place in the ‘ranking’, due to its sustained performance in all three factors: “Investment & Development” (1st), “Attractiveness” (1st) and “Preparation” (3rd).

“This country’s performance is strongly supported by public spending on education, the implementation of apprenticeships, the prioritisation of employee training, and the overall effectiveness of the health system,” the statement said.

Sweden moved up from fifth to second place, thanks to improvements in its performance in the factors “attractiveness” (from fourth to third place) and “preparedness” (from 11th to fourth place).

Luxembourg remained in third place, with a strong performance in “investment & development” and “attractiveness” factors (both in second position), and performed particularly strongly in total public expenditure on education per student and in its quality of education (measured by the student-teacher ratio).

The IMD World Talent Ranking assesses the status and development of the skills necessary for businesses and the economy to achieve long-term value creation through a survey of executives from 64 world economies, with questions grouped by three factors of analysis: attractiveness (the extent to which an economy attracts foreign talent and retains local talent), investment & development (a measure of the resources devoted to cultivating a local workforce) and preparedness (what the quality of the skills and competencies that are available in a country’s talent pool looks like).

IMD is an independent academic institution based in Lausanne (Switzerland) and Singapore, founded almost 75 years ago by business leaders.