By Yoo Yeon Gyeong and Kim Hayeon

Korea has placed 27th in the global competitiveness rankings released by the Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development (IMD).

The country thus finished four notches lower than last year. The drop was the nation's first in three years since being 28th in 2019 and 27th in 2018.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance on June 16 said Korea ranked 27th among 63 nations in the 2022 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking. 

The think tank on June 15 released its assessment of the 63 countries in four categories: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

The country's infrastructure ranking was 16th, up from 17th, but its ratings all fell in economic performance (22nd from 18th), government efficiency (36th from 34th) and business efficiency (33rd from 27th).

The reasons for the fall in the rankings are apparently the deterioration of the government's fiscal conditions such as the fiscal deficit relative to gross domestic product (GDP) and a fall in pension reserves.

Korea placed fourth among the seven member states of the so-called 30-50 club, or countries with per capita income of USD 30,000 and population exceeding 50 million. Korea did better than France (28th), Japan (34th) and Italy (41st) but worse than the U.S. (10th), Germany (15th) and the U.K. (23rd).

Last year's No. 1 Switzerland finished second this year, while Singapore rose to third from fifth and Sweden dropped to fourth from second. Rounding out the top 10 in order were Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Finland, Norway and the U.S.

The ministry said, "Based on the direction of the new administration's economic policy, we will push for structural reform in the five major sectors of the government, labor, education, finance and services. Meanwhile, we will intensively promote efforts to raise national competitiveness through ways like boosting the vitality of the private sector."

dusrud21@korea.kr