NRI Ranking: Pakistan Scores More, Global Ranking Moves One Down

Networked Readiness Index (NRI) is an World Economic Forum‘s initiative that measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities provided by information and communications technology (ICT). In it’s 10th annual Global Information Technology report published for 2010-11, Pakistan scores 3.5 and gets a global rank of 88 on NRI. The score and global rank in 2009-10 were 3.44 and 87 respectively.
The NRI is evaluated on basis of there components:

1. Environment for ICT offered by a given country/community,
2. Readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, businesses, and governments) to use ICT,
3. Usage of ICT amongst these stakeholders.

Among the Asian countries, some observations are:

• A total of 19 Asian countries in the 2010-2011 NRI list, out of 138 countries worldwide.
• 5 Asian countries are in the top 20 of this year’s NRI list – Singapore (2nd), Taiwan (5), South Korea (10), Hong Kong (12), and Japan (19).
• Singapore is the most networked nation in Asia. The Southeast Asian city-state ranked second in the world, behind Sweden.
• Singapore is also the only Asian country ranked higher than the United States (no. 5 worldwide).
• Malaysia ranked first among Upper-middle Income group of countries. Malaysia is also the only upper-middle income country in the top 30 overall. The country’s score increased from 4.65 in 2010 to 4.74 in 2011.
• According to the report, Malaysia “places 10th for ICT readiness of the society as a whole. Among the main stakeholders, the government is showing the way. ICT plays a critical role in its Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020) plan for Malaysia to become high-income economy by 2020″ (p. 24; WEF, 2011).
• Indonesia leaped 14 places to 53 this year, with improvements across the three NRI components.