Taiwan moved up one notch to 11th in the latest global industrial competitiveness rankings, according to a recently released UN report.
Among the four Asian dragons, Taiwan was ahead of Hong Kong, but trailed top performer Singapore and seventh-placed South Korea in the competitiveness index that is part of the Industrial Development Report 2011 released by the UN’s Industrial Development Organization.
The report assesses industrial performance using six indicators that measure an economy’s ability to competitively produce and export manufactured goods.
In terms of industrial capacity, Taiwan outperformed trade rival South Korea with manufacturing value added (MVA) per capita of US$5,105, but finished behind Japan at US$7,929, the US at US$5,334 and Germany at US$5,250.
In terms of industrialization intensity, measured by the share of MVA as a proportion of GDP, Taiwan led Japan and Germany with 26.19 percent, but finished behind South Korea with 29.43 percent.
Taiwan accounted for 1.68 percent of global MVA, higher than Singapore’s share of 0.45 percent and Hong Kong’s 0.08 percent.
Taiwan’s manufactured exports per capita stood at US$8,435, higher than South Korea’s at US$7,246.
Taiwan was more or less on a par with Singapore, South Korea and Japan in terms of the share of manufactured goods as a proportion of total exports, at 96.24 percent.
In addition, Taiwan rivaled Germany in terms of the share of medium and high-technology products as a proportion of manufactured exports at 71.45 percent, ahead of Singapore’s 69.29 percent and Hong Kong’s 70.37 percent.
The report said Taiwan had diversified its manufacturing production with more technologically advanced products, and become more integrated into global value chains and production networks.
The top 10 economies in descending order were Singapore, the US, Japan, Germany, China, Switzerland, South Korea, Ireland, Finland and Belgium.
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