Taiwan has this year moved up seven places in the annual World Talent Ranking compiled by the Switzerland-based International Institute for Management Development, moving from 27th to 20th, its highest ranking since 2013.
Published yesterday, the report assesses the ability of 63 economies to develop, attract and retain talent.
In Asia, Taiwan ranked behind only Singapore (10th) and Hong Kong (15th), and was ahead of Malaysia (22nd), South Korea (33rd) and Japan (35th).
Globally, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden remained the top three performers this year, followed by Austria and Luxembourg, the report said.
The report is based on three factors: investment and development of home-grown talent; appeal — the ability of an economy to tap into the overseas talent pool; and readiness — the availability of skills and competencies.
In those three categories, Taiwan rose one place to 24th in investment and development, three notches to 29th in appeal, and soared 15 spots to 12th in readiness, the largest contribution to its rise in the rankings.
Taiwan improved in more than half of the indicators in the readiness category, including international experience of senior managers, competent senior managers and finance skills.
Taiwan scored highly in the indicators on educational assessment (second), graduates in sciences (third) and healthcare infrastructure (sixth).
Indicators where Taiwan performed poorly included attraction of highly skilled foreign personnel (48th), and cost of living (48th).
Taiwan ranked 46th in three other indicators: total public expenditure on education, the pupil-teacher ratio in secondary schools and a brain drain, the report said.
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