Croatia advanced six places compared to 2017 to rank 54th out of 64 countries in the latest World Talent Ranking, a report compiled by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), a business education school located in the Swiss city of Lausanne, the Croatian National Competitiveness Council reported on Tuesday.
The report covers the 63 countries in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.
The IMD World Talent Ranking report evaluates countries’ ability to train, attract, and retain talented people to create a database of people needed to boost competitiveness and economy growth. The report is based on countries’ performance in three main categories. The first one, investment and development, assesses the improvements to the quality of education system through public investments, with the goal of increasing the number of talented people in the country.
The second one, appeal, assesses the country’s ability to retain their talented people and attract them from abroad.
The third category, readiness, evaluates the country’s ability to meet the labour market’s demands.
“The three categories assess how countries perform in a wide range of areas. These include education, apprenticeships, workplace training, language skills, cost of living, quality of life, remuneration and tax rates,” the IMD World Competitiveness Center said.
The report covers the 63 countries in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.
This year, the ranking is topped by Switzerland, unchanged from 2017. Switzerland is followed by Denmark, Norway, Austria, and the Netherlands.
The bottom of the list is occupied by Colombia, Mexico, Mongolia, and Venezuela.
European countries dominated this year’s ranking, the Croatian competitiveness council said, adding that 11 European countries were among the top 15.
Croatia lags behind when it comes to companies’ investment in the training of the labour force.
In attracting and retaining talents, Croatia ranked last.
Croatia has the best performance in “the investment in and development of home-grown talent” category, where it occupies the 39th place. In this context, Croatia ranks 11th when it comes to government expenditure on education per student, and it is 33rd in terms of total public expenditure on education measured by percentage of GDP.
Croatia also fares well in the pupil-teacher ratios in primary and secondary education. The ratio of students to teaching staff in primary education, at 11.70, puts Croatia in the 12th place, while the country ranks 9th according to the ratio of students to teaching staff in secondary education (9.80).
