NZ falls down infrastructure rankings

New Zealand's global infrastructure ranking is sliding.

Brain drain and the way Kiwis recruit staff are among the anchors dragging the country down three places from 20th last year to 23rd out of 139 countries in the World Economic Forum's annual global competitiveness report, released yesterday.

The index ranks states according to their ability to compete internationally. It uses factors such as markets, institutions, infrastructure and human resources.

While the competitiveness score fell slightly from 4.92 to 4.98, New Zealand Institute director Rick Boven said the drop was disappointing and resulted from insufficient effort to lift innovation performance over a long period of time.

Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said the index helped focus business and policy makers on areas for improvement.

"New Zealand continues to do well in areas such as freedom from corruption, ease of setting up a business, soundness of banks, quality of primary and secondary education, and a low-cost burden for things like customs," he said.

"But we continue to rate poorly for our brain drain [86th], rigid hiring and firing practices [83rd], high interest rates [79th] and lack of local competition [64th]." Also of concern were low rankings in areas relating to innovation, he said, including government procurement of advanced technology [73rd] and availability of scientists and engineers [67th].

Mr O'Reilly said the 23rd placing compared with Australia at 16th and showed how much of a challenge it would be to close the trans-Tasman gap. The ranking drop has seen Qatar, Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia move up.

Switzerland retains the No1 ranking. The other countries making up the top 10 places in the index are Sweden, Singapore, the United States, Germany, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada.

- © Fairfax NZ News