TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has been ranked as the ninth most competitive digital economy in the world by Swiss business school the Institute for Management Development (IMD).

In IMD's World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, Taiwan placed ninth out of 64 countries, rising two spots from its 11th-place ranking last year. In Asia, Taiwan ranked third, trailing only Singapore and South Korea.

The IMD ranking utilized three major factors, nine sub-factors, and 54 criteria to measure the capacity and readiness of economies to adapt, explore, and make full use of "digital transformation." Among the three major factors measured for the ranking, Taiwan placed third in technology, seventh in future readiness, including a first-place ranking in the business agility sub-factor, and 18th in knowledge.

In this survey, Taiwan ranked among the top three in the world in six indicators, two less than in 2022. It ranked first in the world in five of these criteria, including "Total R&D personnel per capita," "IT & media stock market capitalization," "Mobile broadband subscribers," "Agility of companies," and "Use of big data and analytics."

Among the three indicators, the “technology” aspect is mainly used to evaluate the ability of countries to develop digital innovation technologies. Taiwan ranked the best in this aspect, third in the world, up three places from 2022.