Vietnam ranks 47th among 127 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2017 announced on June 15, climbing 12 places compared to last year.

This is the highest rank Vietnam has achieved so far.

The Global Innovation Index, annually co-published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), US-based Cornell University, and INSEAD business school, surveys 127 economies using 79 indicators to gauge innovative capabilities and measureable results.

Vietnam is ranked 9th in the Southeast Asia and Oceania region, one place higher than Thailand.

The survey said new Asian Tigers like Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are emerging and joining not only Asian high tech value chains but also other activities such as information and communication technology (ICT) offshoring.

Although Singapore is still uncontested as number 1 among the smaller or emerging Asian economies, countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand are catching up rapidly, the survey said.

“Among them, Vietnam tops education expenditure in the region and does very well in ICT use, gross capital information and FDI net inflows,” the survey said.

Additionally, Vietnam was assessed to be strong in a range of indicators, including knowledge and technology outputs; market sophistication, and expenditure on education.

The world’s five most innovative nations in the Global Innovation Index 2017 are Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, the US and the UK.

Innovation is now widely recognised as a central driver of economic growth and development. The Global Innovation Index aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing a rich of database of detailed metrics for 127 economies, which represent 92.5 percent of the world’s population and 97.6 percent of global GDP.

VNA